Hey, Baby
by Javanyet
Summary: What if Mike Logan met the woman of his dreams on the job, except she isn't a cop?
1. Altared states

"Hey baby." No reply. "Bad day?" He went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge even before he dropped his badge and locked up his piece. Five years a cop's wife, she knew how to read.

"Usual."

She went to him, laid a hand on his hip. "Yeah?" He nodded, then told her about the vic, a teenage girl, found in the park. Usual, but the kids always got to him more. She led him to the sofa by his belt and pulled him down with her.

"Hey," she repeated.

Strained smile.

She leaned closer. "_Hey_," and she was answered by a sweet kiss. Always sweet, no matter the day.

"Hey." His smile loosened, realizing the regularness and that he was home safe from the job, and he stretched long arms to surround her for another kiss. "Good day?"

She nodded up at him. "Yeah. Real good. Grants answered with big bucks." She was on the board of a school she'd first known through an investigation of his. Photography. Outreach to poor and deprived kids. Who knew it had such a success rate, more than the regular schools. Kids stayed in public school, went on to college. Some became professionals. She didn't know one end of a camera from the other, really. Strictly PHD, Press Here Dummy. It didn't slow her down though, she beat the pavement and the school guidance offices with a vengeance, the Recruiter from Hell. And she did have an eye for good photographs, quite a few adorned their apartment, all black and white. "Why no color?" he asked her once. "Color distracts from the essence," she told him. It was a bullshit line and she knew it, but couldn't think of any other way to express it. He had to agree. Their wedding pictures were black and white, because it was all they could afford. But they captured the essence.

"Glad one of us made out." Medium sigh. This was a good thing; a heavy sigh meant he was deeply troubled. Well shit, he was a mostly-homicide detective, after all. The beginning of _every_case was a bad day, and the way the police work went every day was a mix of beginning, middle, and end. When one began and one ended (ended right, anyway) at the same time, it was break-even. Sometimes better than that. Unlike lots of cops he did talk to his wife about work, when he was at a dead end or in a tight puzzle and just needed any crazy idea that might come from the outside. They knew it was against the rules and they weren't the first ones who broke them. But when it got to him _too_deep he didn't really talk. Again unlike some other cops the stress and darkness didn't play out in the usual way, with short temper and aggression. When Mike was feeling used up and black-hearted he compensated by showering Merry with all the affection he could express. "In my line of work the world sucks, and people are monsters, and life is dark as a fucking coal mine," he told her once. "Then I come home and see you, and get reminded how full of shit I am." That was about as mushy as Mike ever got, but she didn't mind. If he wasn't much of a romantic, well neither was she. They'd both seen too much to cling to that kind of thing. But they were good at being together, good at finding the best in each other, and very, very good at setting each other right when they were veering off course. Still, there were times when Mike's own demons got stirred up by whatever case he might be working on, like that little girl with the psycho shrink father and abused, drug addicted mother. He went in so deep at those times it was hard to find him., so she just let him be quiet and hung around and waited for him to come back. Come hell or high water, though, bad days or good for him or her, the one code word that meant "here I am" was "Hey".

"Hey."

His look was questioning. What, he wanted to know, what.

"Nothin." She kissed him again. "You did good. I know you did. You always do. Don't make me give you the Lecture."

He rolled his eyes and laughed, fully, finally. The Lecture. Where she told him everything he did made a difference, win or lose, it made a difference to the families and friends of the vics especially. Sure they'd love it if every perp went in for life but that just didn't always happen. Not always for sleazy reasons, either. Sometimes the jury just wasn't convinced, for all the cops and the D.A. and the judge told them. Fair enough. But not fair. And he took it hard, especially on a day like today when he had to bring the parents of a (maybe) wholesome high school kid to the morgue to identify their daughter's beat-up body. But Merry came back harder, on days like these, and it saved his soul more often than not. She sat quietly holding his right _(gun)_ hand, running her fingers over the palm like a blind gypsy.

"How about we have Lennie for dinner tonight?" she asked. Lennie could probably use a little TLC too, and he lived alone.

He asked with a wiseass grin, "You goin' cannibal?"

Merry Logan knew though Mike spent more than half his life with his partner, social company was different. And she did love Lennie. After all, he watched her husband's back in a way she could never imagine doing. For that alone she loved him. But once she got to know him, she knew it would've happened anyway. He and Lennie had been working together almost two years now. He was a good match for Mikey, laconic and laid back where her husband could sometimes get wound tighter than a cheap watch. If other teams were good cop/bad cop, Mike and Lennie were fast cop/slow cop. It worked well. And she'd left nothing to trust, nothing to chance, and no word unspoken when Detective Leonard Briscoe was first assigned to partner Mike.

* * *

"Hey. Detective Logan around? I was supposed to meet him..." she trailed off. She wasn't used to coming into the squad looking for him, but since Phil had been shot she was sticking pretty close. After Max, then Phil barely a year later, well she just stuck close. The detective with the careworn, sort of basset hound face looked up from his paperwork. At Phil's desk. At Max's desk.

"He's gone on a hospital visit. Can I help you?" It had only been a few days, but by now he had to know Mike was married. Was he wondering if this was an outsider? She took the plunge, leaning down and sticking out her hand.

"Meredith Ryan Logan. Call me Merry." The detective got to his feet, not sprang, simply rose as one might do for any social nicety.

"Lennie Briscoe. I'm your husband's new partner."

She nodded. "Yeah. I know. He's mentioned you." She sat at Mike's desk, and looked around a little awkwardly as Lennie paused in his paperwork. "So I guess he went to see Phil."

"Yeah, he should be back any minute. Was bringing him about forty pounds of those little Italian cookies."

"Biscotti Amerettini," she laughed. "Elaine'll kill him." An unnatural silence descended, broken finally by Briscoe.

"So, Mrs. Logan,"

"Merry."

"So, Merry." He shifted a little, not exactly uneasy but aware he was being studied, and chuckled under his breath. "Why do I suddenly feel like I'm on a job interview."

He was straightforward. Good. She liked that. She sat forward in Mike's chair, leaned her chin in her hand, and looked back at Lennie Briscoe, wanting to know him all at once. He saved her the strain.

"So Merry, let's just put it on the table. I'm Mike's new partner, and I guess you might be wondering some things to yourself."

"Not for long, I don't think."

He laughed again, more openly this time, and loosened up. "Well in four days we haven't 'bonded', but he _has_ talked a little. Said his wife speaks her mind." He looked her in the eye, with an expression that invited everything she might want to say. "So, speak."

"Detective Briscoe,"

"Lennie."

"Lennie. Yeah you're right." She hastened to explain, "I didn't know Mike wouldn't be here, really. But since he's not, well yeah. It could turn out to be a job interview, even if I can't turn you down." Just then Tony Profaci strode by en route to who knows where a cop might be going in the middle of the day, but he paused long enough to greet her. "Hey, Irish, whassup?" and bent to kiss her cheek. She returned the quick kiss. "Just checking out the new blood, Tony."

"You better measure up, Briscoe," he said earnestly. "This lady is the_law_." Then he whooshed off to wherever.

She took a breath. She wasn't feeling hesitant at all, was clear and solid in what she wanted to say, but unsure of how this "new blood" would take it. She didn't want to queer things between Mike and his new partner. She knew that if Mike knew she was doing this he wouldn't be pleased. It was an unspoken agreement that she not get involved in his work.

"Okay, Lennie. I gotta tell you I know you've got a long career and have mostly been a good cop."

An arched eyebrow. "Mostly."

"Yeah. When it counts, on the street, in the field. The, ah, questions have been 'administrative'." She put the word in quotations so he would know that she knew the difference.

"You've done some homework."

"I have contacts in records." Silence. She shrugged. "Hey, I'm a cop's wife. I know my way around and I'm not shy to go there."

Briscoe leaned his chair (Phil's chair, Max's chair) back and smiled. "After only five minutes, why am I not surprised?"

She leaned forward. "Okay, no bullshit. You watch Mike's back. I need to know whoever does that does it right. Everything I've found out about you says you will. But I need you to know, if I ever doubt that, I will raise holy hell. With IAD, with Cragen, with anyone who will listen."

"That might make me think you have pull."

She focused like laser. "Pull? No. Balls, yeah."

"I thought I heard something clank when you sat down." He didn't usually talk like this to women he'd just met, but something told him it was okay. When she laughed he was sure.

But then she sighed and looked away for a minute, then back to Lennie. "Look. Look. We've been through one partner killed, and one shot next-to-dead, in a little less than two years. And at the same time I've been trying to hold Mike together I've thought oh shit it could have been him. I_ have_ to do this. I _have_ to make sure in my mind, in my heart, that whoever is out there with him is someone _I_ can depend on, not just him. Don't worry, in a few weeks he'll be bonded to you like crazy glue. He always is. Oh, right now he's going through the Change Anxiety but he'll attach. And so will I. You're my family now, just like him. Because I know that partners go deeper than family, than husband and wife. Because odds are I won't ever be in the position where I can save his life. But you will be. You are. And I don't have the right to be here or to say these things, and you could get someone hammered in Records for telling me shit. But you won't." She shut up for a minute, then added "Am I making sense? Or am I just your new partner's bitch wife?"

"Not that there's anything _wrong_ with that," he told her with a half-smile. "But I know why you're asking. And I won't ask the same questions about Mike. Because after only four days, I know."

They locked eyes, saying nothing for a moment. Lennie went back to finishing his filing and said matter-of-factly, "But don't get_too_attached to me. Your husband keeps telling me I'm just a temp."

She laughed almost inaudibly and shook her head. "Yeah, and he keeps telling _me_ I still look twenty-five. Not that he knew me then." She looked at Phil's nameplate, still on the desk where Lennie was working. She didn't realize her face went so sad all of a sudden, until Lennie said, "It's a real kick in the ass, isn't it? Everybody rallies around the partner but it shakes up the 'significant others' in a whole different way. So who holds _them_ together, huh?"

"You married, Lennie?"

"Not lately. I gave it up for Lent."

She really was beginning to like this guy, even though Mikey tended to bitch about him. It was the New Partner bitch, not really about Lennie at all. It was the Not-Phil bitch, who started out dealing with the Not-Max bitch. "At least Phil's still alive," she said apropos of nothing.

"Yeah, that's a real plus," he agreed.

"What's going on here? Less than a week, and already you're hitting on my wife?"

Mike, clearly taken aback by Merry's presence at his desk, and looking a little upset.

"No way, she's too much woman for me. But you got yourself a prizewinner. In case you didn't know."

He kissed her as she rose from his chair. "Trust me, I know. But whaddaya doing here, middle of the day? Everything okay?" He peered into her eyes for clues.

"Yeah. Just passing by and figured I'd say hello." Phil had only been shot two weeks ago. She was still very edgy, and he knew it.

"So how's Big Daddy doing?" she asked him. He frowned, deeply, and told Lennie, "Might as well unpack. Phil got kicked upstairs to the 110th detectives' administrative desk." Merry sighed inwardly. Mike had been fighting that battle with reality he engaged in now and then, insisting that Phil would be back after a little rehab. Elaine had told her about the nerve damage and weakness in his legs, but Mike wouldn't let it go. Merry didn't try to talk him out of it, but her silence on the subject spoke volumes. He'd tried to pick a couple of debates over it, to pound his points home enough so he'd really believe it himself, but the most she'd say was "Let's just wait and see how it goes." Now she just ran a hand down his already-perfect tie to straighten it and said, "Sounds like a good move. He deserves the promotion. _And_ a break from you," she tried to tease, but it fell flat. Their eyes locked, sharing everything as always. "Yeah, I know." He kissed her again, longer this time. A whistle from across the squad room.

"I'd pay to see more!" Detective Bradley called out.

"Vice is down the hall," Merry countered sharply. "Do let the door hit you in the ass."

"You got good taste in wives, Mike," Lennie told him. "I was never real good at it, myself." Merry looked confused, and Mike leaned down with a confidential wink and told her in a stage whisper, "Three time loser."

Bradley was muttering, and finally announced, "Smart mouth like that needs some schooling."

Mike laughed out loud. "She could kick your ass from here to Yonkers. Better shut your own mouth while you still got teeth in it." Everyone broke up.

Merry extended her hand to Lennie once again, leaning against the arm Mike had around her waist. "Welcome to the family, Lennie Briscoe. We put the fun in dysfunctional."

* * *

"Okay, sure. I'll give Lennie a call."

She knew it wouldn't be entirely a shop talk night. Lennie Briscoe was a bottomless pit of stories, some from work, many others just from life. He was the kind of person, if she'd just met him at work or at a coffee shop or something, she'd want to be friends.

"What's for dinner?" he asked Mike, who called out, "Lennie wants to know what's for dinner?"

"Tonight's menu is take it or leave it," Merry hollered from the kitchen.

Before Mike could relay the message Briscoe told him, "I heard that just fine. Guess I've worked my way up from 'eat it or wear it'. When you gonna teach the little woman some manners?"

Mike laughed darkly. "When I swap my gonads for steel bearings. Half hour, hour?"

"Give or take. Make sure you're dressed when I get there." Lennie was always ragging on Mike about his perpetual honeymoon.

"No promises."

For all her bold talk, Merry was already working on what she knew was Lennie's favorite: lemon/pepper/tarragon chicken, peppermint carrots, green beans, huge salad, and lots of Parmesan garlic mashed potatoes. Both Lennie and Mike could put away pounds of her mashed potatoes so she had to make plenty whenever Lennie came over, to avoid conflict. Everything was home made, and everything was fresh-bought from the Korean grocer on the corner. Mr. Paik knew Merry well, and often held aside the best produce he had when he knew she was coming in, just as often cutting her a discount. "A nice customer like you, you're not married to Donald Trump," he'd say with a smile. He knew that, for all her busy schedule, Merry loved to cook and she was very picky about ingredients. He respected that. Too many people would just grab the first convenient thing, and had no idea how to judge a good piece of fruit or a fresh vegetable.

It was true, Merry did love to cook. It helped her unwind from the stress of being the "security coordinator" at a nearby club. In the kitchen as at work, she was meticulous and exacting. When Mike cooked, which was as frequently as Merry would allow, he welcomed company and conversation. She, however, banished everyone from the kitchen while she worked.

Once, long ago, Mike had made the unwise suggestion that Merry might save some time making dinner if she used frozen veggies.

"And you might save some time in the morning if you slept in your suit," she'd responded, drily enough to crumble jello. Point taken.

"I recognize that aroma..." Lennie sang as he swept into the apartment. "The harbinger of paradise..."

"It's chicken," Mike informed him, rolling his eyes as he took his partner's coat. "Get a grip."

Merry leaned out of the kitchen. "He was right the first time, asshole. Why don't _you_drag your refined palate to the nearest dog wagon where it'll be appreciated? They must be running you a tab by now."

"I _love _the way you two lovebirds sweet-talk," Briscoe ventured to the kitchen door (but no further, being no fool) to kiss her hello. "Hiya gorgeous. When you gonna lose this bum and hook up with some _real_ class?"

"I dunno," she mused, heading back to check the oven, "when is Johnny Depp gonna be single again?"

"Ooh," both men groaned in unison, clutching their guts as if shot. Then Mike suggested, "Hey let's go check out the Yankees, and leave Martha in the kitchen where all women belong." He mimed ducking, and rushed snickering into the living room.

"Don't get rug burns on your knuckles, dear," she called after them and added, Bostonian to the core, "and Yankees _SUCK!_

As they sat on the sofa and Mike clicked on the TV Lennie mused, "Y'know, if I'd proposed to a woman like that I'd still be married."

Mike snorted. "If you'd proposed to a woman like that you'd still be in _traction_."

"Right. I see _you're_doing okay, Mr. Sensitive New Age Guy."

Fake shudder. "I'm holding my own."

Lennie just shook his head, rolled his eyes, and laughed. If ever he'd met a man who was stoned-stupid-lost in love, it was his wiseass partner.


	2. What's a nice girl like you

Mike Logan and Meredith Ryan met under less than romantic circumstances. She worked the door at a bar that couldn't be considered elegant, and the guy who kept bothering her, then following her, then threatening her, wound up dead in the back alley with a double-edged knife in his throat. Her double-edged knife. More than one patron had seen her mention the knife to the guy, with the warning, "If you come around me again I'll cut your fucking nuts off." That the knife was considered an illegal weapon was a bit of a problem in itself. That only her fingerprints were found on it was something more of a problem. That she was unaccounted for at the approximate time of the murder (she'd been in the ladies room taking a much needed piss, but nobody noticed her among the crowd) was beyond a problem.

When Mike Logan and his partner Max Greevey first interviewed the thirty-ish (or so they thought... her i.d. revealed she was in fact thirty-five) redhead at the bar the next morning she was shook up and determined not to show it.

"You told him you'd cut his nuts off," Logan reminded her when she said they hadn't had any serious confrontation that night.

"Well unless his nuts are _missing, _I fail to see the connection." She was impatient and unfriendly, but at least semi-cooperative. But she'd be damned if she'd take the blame for this. She'd been up for more than twenty four hours by the time they "invited" her to the station, and she was in no mood for cops trying to be clever.

The older detective Greevey, a beefy fatherly type, was more nuts and bolts. "So your knife wound up in Mr. Wonderful's throat. Where was it before then, last you knew?"

"In my bag, in the office. Which isn't locked. The back door to the bar isn't usually locked either. The alley is so nasty only junkies hang out there." At this the younger detective, Logan, perked up. But before he could open his mouth Merry added, "the safe, _that's_ locked and everyone knows it. Any cash that isn't in the till is in the safe, all the time."

"So if anyone wanted to say, look for an employee's wallet,"

"Or an illegal double edged Pakistani dagger," piped up Logan, meeting with a disapproving look from his partner,

"They could just go in the back. Right?"

She managed to avoid smirking at Logan. "Yeah. Or the front. There's access from behind the bar, and a door near the dance floor." She knew they knew about the doors, and she knew they were testing her.

"Lemme guess," said Greevey, "Not locked."

"Nope. Hey Louie says if someone wants to get in they're just gonna break the lock anyway, so save a few bucks and let 'em have their way."

"Except with the safe," said Logan.

"Right." Greevey was consulting his notes, Logan seemed lost in thought. He'll never find his way out, Merry thought.

"Look, gentlemen, not that it hasn't been a little slice of heaven, because it hasn't, but I haven't slept since Thursday night and sleep deprivation interferes with my higher cognitive functioning. So if I'm not under arrest can I please go home now?"

Before Greevey could answer, Logan observed "You seem real broke up over this guy getting killed."

She gave him a "duh" look. "Brian O'Connor was an asshole's asshole. You know how some guys have women lined up for them? Brian's line was made up of pissed off people."

Logan was leaning forward now, challenging, "Any of them pissed off enough to kill him?"

The "duh" look amplified. "Well he's _dead_, isn't he?" Merry gestured around the small interrogation room. "You wanna talk to people with issues, don't bother with this shoebox. You'll need a freaking cattle call. Maybe you can rent the Javits Center. Wanna know how I feel about him being dead, since that's what you're tapdancing around here? Brian O'Connor got offed, boo hoo. I'd spit on his grave, but I hate to stand in line." Detective Logan turned away abruptly, pretending to cough, and almost succeeded in covering a snort of laughter. In spite of everything he was beginning to buy her story. There was just something so _normal_ about her behavior. Perps who were lying either were nervous wrecks or played the indignant bit over the top. She was edgy, but mostly tired and annoyed and completely out of her league, like she'd landed on Mars and was trying to figure the terrain.

Greevey ratcheted down the mood, speaking quietly to Merry. She'd think this was the good cop/bad cop thing, but he seemed like a sincerely nice guy. "Look, Merry, you're not helping yourself here. When you're being questioned about a murder it doesn't help to tell us how much you hated the victim."

"You want me to lie and say I liked the guy, I'm sorry he's dead? He told _me_ he was gonna do _me_ six ways from Sunday. He left notes _inside_ my apartment, but didn't leave any evidence of b&e." She was losing the veneer of civility she'd been barely hanging onto. Now both cops sat up a little straighter. This was the first time she'd mentioned any of this.

"You report all that?" Logan asked her.

"Hell yes, I reported all that. You're a cop, you tell me. Can you pick someone up for _threatening _someone without witnesses? Can you bust someone for b&e when there _was_ no b&e and no fingerprints? Shit, I couldn't even prove he was _there_. I couldn't even get a restraining order, and they hand those out like Halloween candy." Both men looked at her without comment.

"What, nothing to say? No pithy comments from the blue-eyed boy wonder with the Highland necktie? Sounds like I'm building a nice case for self defense or justifiable homicide or something doesn't it? Except for one thing." She stood and leaned over the table for emphasis, her voice dropping low. "_I didn't do it_." She fell back into her seat, looking around the room as if for escape.

"You keep any of the things he left at your place?" Logan figured it might be more than notes.

"Oh yeah," Merry sneered, "in my hope chest. I treasure them."

"Come _on_, can we stop the swordplay long enough to figure out some stuff here?" Now it was Greevey whose patience was wearing thin. He saw chemistry here, even if it was negative, and chemistry was a bad thing in an interrogation room.

Merry was glaring at them both by now.

"Look," Logan cajoled in a voice that was almost gentle. "If you saved that stuff, and my guess is you did because you probably tried to use it to build some case or other against this jerk to leave you alone, if you saved any of it maybe we can ask around and find out if he pulled this routine on any other women who 'hate to stand in line'. Get it?"

She ran a hand through her hair. Deep red, wide blonde streaks. "Yeah, got it. Women, husbands, boyfriends, anyone else who might have wanted Mr. Wonderful dead. But why would they wanna make it look like _I _did it? I didn't know anybody hated me enough to do that." She paused, staring at her hands. "I didn't know anybody _hated_ me at all."

Greevey shrugged. "Might not be anybody who hates you. Might just be someone who doesn't _like_ you enough to care if you go down and they don't."

"You must piss off the drunks you have to deal with. Any of 'em hold a grudge when they sober up?" Logan asked her.

"Not so's it kept them away from the bar. Most of 'em apologize when they see me again."

"And the rest?" Greevey inquired.

"Sort of slink in, embarrassed-like. Existential bag-over-the-head, you know? It's a friendly place. Only one with a real grudge was Brian. And his ego wouldn't allow him to off himself just to frame me."

Logan changed directions. "So what did you do to piss _him_ off so bad?" This was met by an angry glare, and he rephrased quickly. "I mean what do you figure he _thought _you did?"

Finally, she sighed. "What did I do? What did _anyone_ do that got sick of him ten seconds after figuring him out, which was ten seconds after they met him. They walked away, or told him to get lost. Brian was big on telling stories, you know, how smart he was, all the important stuff he'd done. Always trying to impress people, you know? And if they weren't impressed, didn't buy him a drink, or go out with him or whatever, it offended his superior ego. You got pissed at him, he reflected it right back to the fifth power."

Logan smirked. "The 'don't you know who I am' syndrome."

"Exactly. He wanted everyone to treat him like Trump. You know how some guys go with all these half-assed schemes and jumped up scams and become professional losers, so they try to compensate? Well Brian, he didn't even _try_ to accomplish anything. He wanted to build his empire with his mouth, only nobody was financing."

That triggered Greevey. "He owe money? Drugs, loan sharks, anything?"

"Not that anyone knew. Never seemed high to me, except on himself. As for money, he was a trust fund baby. When his mom died the estate went to him. He loved waving the monthly statements around."

"Trump?" Greevey asked.

"Nah. More like Corcoran. But it's plenty for a single guy with no expensive vices."

Another silence as the detectives decided what to ask next, and how to put it together coherently.

"Look I'm not stupid. I know I'm your best guess here."

Noncommital expressions on the faces of both detectives. Greevey handed her his card. "Give a call and let us know when you can bring those 'souvenirs' in. Sooner than later. We'll be in touch if we need to talk again." Both men stood. "You're free to go," Greevey told her. "Just don't go too far."

She slouched to her feet, desperately weary. "Swell. Where can I call a cab? Or I'll fall asleep on the subway and then you'll be pulling knives out of _me_."

"Detective Logan will run you home. Won't you?" Logan looked like he wanted to argue, then thought better of it. He held the door for Merry. "Yeah, come on. I'm cheaper than a taxi, and I speak English."

"Que bueno."

Mike snickered again to himself. She was a piece of work, this one. Too bad she was primo suspect in the case.

She said little on the trip to her place aside from giving him directions. Mike tried to make some awkward small talk but it came out sounding like more interrogation. She finally told him to knock it off.

"Don't get to know me, Detective Logan. It's a bad idea."

"Why's that?" he answered by reflex, knowing at once how stupid it sounded.

"Because you're probably gonna have to arrest me. Could make it a little freaky if we found out we like the same music or something." Once you got around the mouth and ego, he seemed like an okay guy. Thirty-ish, she figured (close, he was twenty-eight), probably Irish Catholic upbringing. Seriously Catholic-raised guys acted a certain way with women, like they couldn't decide whether they wanted to protect you or fight with you. Must be the nuns at school or something. She stared out the window and sighed.

"What?" he wanted to know.

She knew what he was talking about and rotated her head, still against the headrest, to regard him with disbelief. "You're kidding, right? The asshole who was stalking me was just murdered. That's a good thing for me, by the way, since you folks were no damn use to me. I haven't slept in close to 30 hours, and I have to go back to work tonight. And oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I'm the only handy suspect in the asshole's murder." She was silent for half a second. "_And _you confiscated my only defensive weapon."

Mike hooted. "Now who's kidding? As long as you've got a _mouth_ you've got a defensive weapon. And you're lucky we didn't charge you for that Pakistani pig-sticker."

"Whatever." She rolled her head to stare out the window again. "Okay, right up here on the right." He pulled the car to a stop in the street.

"You want me to walk you up?" he asked. Merry shook her head.

"This wasn't a blind date, Detective. And besides, the asshole is _dead_." She smirked on the last word.

"You need to stop doing that. It'll give people the wrong idea about your sweet innocent nature."

"Uh-huh. I'll call your partner about the stuff I pull together." She climbed out of the sedan and held the door for a moment. "It's been _ever_ so elegant." Smiling sweetly, she swept a curtsy before slamming the door hard enough to pop Mike's eardrums.

"And whadda YOU lookin' at, losers?" she yelled to some punks on the adjoining stoop who were staring at their neighbor exiting an unmarked. Mike shook his head as he watched her drag up the steps and let herself into the building. "That is one wild woman," he muttered to himself under a bemused smile. "And I got ten bucks says she didn't do it."

"So do you have anything harder than currency to back up that theory?" Capt. Cragen inquired drily. He was confronted by his two best detectives who had only one good suspect, and that suspect had very strong ties to the crime. Only they didn't believe she did it, and were lobbying for more time to explore other possibilities.

"Let's just go over this so I don't miss anything, shall we? Ms. Ryan is a _bouncer _at a bar called The Death of Me. The vic had been stalking her and threatening her, she _says_, but she couldn't get any police help for her problem. She didn't even have enough juice for a restraining order. So _if _he was harassing her he could pretty much do it at will, am I right?" Silence from Logan and Greevey. "Okay. So she's gone through about everything she can to get rid of the guy, and he's still coming and going as he pleases from her apartment This is all according to her, by the way. Then, last Friday, the guy is giving her a hard time _again_, only this time he winds up dead in the back alley. With her knife in his neck. With only her prints on it. Witnesses saw her threaten him not long before that. And her whereabouts are unaccounted for at the time of the murder."

"She says she was in the ladies' room," Logan interjected.

"Really? And with all the _ladies_ you talked to who were there that night, did even one of them remember _seeing _her at around 12:30 in the ladies room?" More silence. "Fine. And let's not forget that little portion of the interview I witnessed, where the lady in question expressed her undying _loathing _of the vic and her joy at his death. And the fact that _nothing_ in her story points to anyone else as the doer." Exaggerated patience was Cragen's strong suit. "So I think gentlemen, the next _logical _step here is to do what we usually do with a suspect and get a _search warrant_ for her apartment. You know, to find things like maybe bloody clothes, evidence that maybe this wasn't really a stalking case but a love affair gone bad? You know, the _usual_ crime-fighting things we do when our wallets don't talk to us." He glared meaningfully at the two men.

"Fine," said Greevey. "We'll get a warrant."

By Monday afternoon Logan, Greevey, and two uniformed officers were searching through Merry Ryan's small apartment inch by inch. She stood in the middle of the tiny living room, turning slow circles, showering the officers and detectives with nervous admonishments. "Be _careful_ with that, it's not a comic book! she warned one cop who was riffling the pages of her very valuable Oscar Wilde first edition. It was practically the _only _valuable thing she owned. Greevey accidentally sent a row of cd's cascading off the end of an open shelf. She whipped around. "Why didn't you just bring a sledgehammer?" she accused.

"Sorry, Ms. Ryan, we're really not here to wreck the place," Logan assured her as he knelt to help his partner. Perusing some of the titles as he picked up the cases he observed, "Uh-oh, looks like we do like some of the same music..." Merry didn't respond, but Max gave him a "what the hell?" look. "Nothin," Mike muttered.

Merry paced from one man to the other, hands clenched in front of her. "If you told me what you were _looking_ for, I could help you find it," she offered, realizing immediately how stupid that sounded.

"Don't," she told Greevey, raising a hand as he barely opened his mouth. "I know."

He stood anyway and let Logan finish replacing the cd's. "Ms. Ryan, really, I think it would be a good idea for you just to keep to one side and let us do our work. We don't want this to take any longer than it has to." They'd put all the "souvenirs" she'd mentioned in evidence bags, as well as the tower from her computer and all the laundry from her hamper. In fact, they searched through every stitch of clothing she owned. She knew why. She knew why all of it. Merry fled to the kitchen, where they'd turned through everything already but found nothing of interest. She stood pressed back into the corner where the counters joined, arms wrapped around her middle, facing the door. She didn't know what else to do. After nearly half an hour Logan ventured cautiously through the doorway and eyed her.

"You okay?"

"Whaddayou think?"

"I think I'd be a little hinky if a bunch of strangers went through all my stuff."

"Must be why you got the gold shield. Real perceptive."

"Look, we're just about through. My partner and I want to go over the list of what we're taking."

"Have him bring it in here," she told him. Going in the living room right now would make her feel creepy. Cops with rubber gloves, pawing through everything that made this place hers. He seemed to understand. "Sure. Just a minute." She heard him talking with Greevey in the other room, the latter seeming to protest, but both came into the kitchen minutes later. She sat down at the table and she went over the list, the two detectives standing over her.

"Look would you mind sitting down, huh? It would make me feel less surrounded." They sat. The list was pretty short. Some clothes, the stuff Brian had left during his break-ins of her apartment and car, the computer tower.

"I need my computer. It has my grant work, and I write. For myself. I need it." So much of her was in that hard drive, she was sick at the thought of others going through it all. The prospect of them messing up the files was worse.

Detective Greevey seemed neutral but not unsympathetic. "We'll get it back to you as soon as we can. After the lab goes through it all, you can have everything back."

"Unless."

He shrugged. Did he look uncomfortable for just a second? "Well, yeah." One of the uniforms stuck his head through the door. "Sarge, we're gonna take off if we're all through here."

"Sure," Greevey told him, "we're right behind you." He rose, and Logan followed. "We'll be in touch," Greevey told her.

"Yeah, yeah. You know, I wish I'd had this much attention from New York's finest when it really would have counted. You know your way out."

She heard the front door close quietly. It killed her, the way they were so careful and polite while pulling her life apart. She was so tired, she hadn't slept much since Friday. Through the kitchen door she could see the empty space under her desk where the computer tower belonged, and the tears she hadn't really thought about began working their way out. She wasn't used to feeling totally helpless. At the bar she was in control, and when things started to slip she had backup. Now she had nothing. She didn't make close friends easily because she was so private. No big secret reasons why, but she'd moved around every few years and had always been slow to connect. Her coworkers at the bar got pretty close, Joey especially, but still she tended to deal with trouble herself instead of sharing it. She was used to being on her own, proud of being self-sufficient, and truth to tell a little neurotic about relying on anyone else for much of anything. It felt queasy letting people in too close too fast, and frankly too many people bored her to tears. She sat at the table staring through bloodshot eyes at the copy of the search warrant and evidence list. What kind of ride was she going on? She jumped at the soft rap on the doorjamb, and looked up. Mike Logan.

"Sorry. I knocked on the front door but I guess you didn't hear." He laid a pen on the table, one of her funky multicolored wood ones from San Francisco.

"Max borrowed this. Figured we shouldn't take something we don't need.

"Who's Max?"

"My partner."

"Oh. I forgot." She rubbed her eyes and looked up at him. "I didn't do it," she said simply.

"That's what we're trying to figure out." Something to say, and he guessed the reply before it came.

"Bullshit. You don't get a search warrant to prove someone's innocence. And you'll find things, I dunno, _things_ that make things look worse. I don't know what, but you'll find them because you're looking."

He rested his fingertips on the table, inches from her hands. "It's hard. I'm sorry."

She raised an eyebrow. "That could get you in trouble. The sorry part. You're not supposed to be sorry."

"Yeah, I know. Don't tell my partner, okay?" He smiled, barely. "We'll be in touch, Ms. Ryan."

"Merry."

He paused in the doorway. "Mike. I know my way out."

I wish to hell _I_ did, Merry thought to herself as she heard the door close behind him.


	3. Lost and found

She was right. They found things. In her computer, the emails from months before, when she was trying to be reasonable. The stuff she said to humor him, to shine him on, until he could get distracted by somebody else. But they saw it differently. They saw someone acquiescing to the attention, maybe even enjoying it, then getting bored with the game. They didn't find any bloody clothes, but they also didn't find anything that could prove that Brian left that stuff after breaking in. He could have given it to her at work. Worse, they could have been presents she'd accepted. Dried flowers, notes, a book or two. Fingerprint cops came back and dusted the whole place again and everything in it, even though they'd done the same thing the times she reported break-ins. His prints weren't there. And they couldn't find anyone else he might have bothered in the same way, either. Oh, the customers concurred that Brian was bad business, a poser and a pain in the ass, but none knew of any dark deeds and he had no police record. Merry's lack of close confidantes in the matter meant there was no one to corroborate her story of the stalking (she'd shared some of it with Joey, but he was away) and how much trouble and fear it caused her, just some casual bitching at the bar about "that creep". She'd gotten her locks changed three times in the past two months, sure, but it could have been for any reason. She told the super her purse had been snatched (it hadn't), but never reported it. Then she said she lost her keys at the bar. And still nobody had seen her at the time they thought Brian had been killed. It would have been easy for anybody in that crowded place to slip out the back unnoticed and come back in ten or fifteen minutes later. Especially because they stopped collecting cover at twenty after twelve so she could circulate, and the crowd that night was heavy.

"Pick her up," Cragen told them the following Friday afternoon.

"Look, how about a little more time to check out some stuff, we really don't like her for this," Greevey attempted.

"I think you like her a little too _much_. You don't _have_ any 'stuff' to check out. Hell, Max, she's not the first suspect you felt hinky about."

Mike looked pissed off at the comment but Max responded, "I'm telling you, this just doesn't _feel _right. It's all too perfect."

Cragen looked from Max to Mike. "Guys. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Pick her up. Or do I have to send uniforms?"

It was 6:30 by the time they got the warrant, so they had to go to the bar to find her. It wasn't crowded yet, but there were customers. Regulars. Merry was at the bar talking with Joey, the other bouncer-cum-bartender and her work partner, about the coming night's music and the prospects for a big crowd. Joey looked toward the door before she did. Instinctively Merry looked up into the mirror behind the bar and saw Greevey and Logan entering, and her eyes locked with theirs. She knew immediately why they were there.

"Oh shit," she said, "here we go."

"What the fuck," Joey began.

"I gotta go, Joe. I can't work tonight. I gotta go with these guys, okay?"

But Joey was away from the bar in a flash. He'd been on vacation when Brian was killed and so hadn't been interviewed very deeply about the murder when he returned, just asked about the stalking. He said she'd bitched about Brian's unwelcome attention, but no details.

"You wanna tell me what you want with her?" Joey challenged Max, who was taking the point. He and Logan both had pulled out their badges.

"We need Ms. Ryan to come with us." He didn't want to arrest her out loud in front of the whole bar. For that, at least, she was grateful.

"It's okay, Joey. Just doing their job." Just a trace of irony. She took her bag and jacket from the wall hook behind the bar, and they followed her into the alcove between the outer and inner doors.

"Thanks for that, anyway." But when Merry saw Greevey pull out handcuffs she backed away reflexively, colliding with the cigarette machine. Suddenly panicked by the reality, she looked from one detective to the other.

"We gotta," Greevey told her in that almost-fatherly voice. "It's just procedure."

"We can cuff her in front, right?" Logan asked his partner, who hesitated until he looked Merry in the face again. "Yeah sure." Greevey took her jacket and purse and recited, "Meredith Ann Ryan you are under arrest for the murder of Brian O'Connor. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for you at no charge." Logan latched the cuffs around her outstretched wrists. Then he did something that seemed odd to her, he took her tightly closed fists in his hands, pretending to check if the cuffs were right, holding on for just a heartbeat until the tremble stopped. She didn't think Detective Greevey could see.

"Do you understand your rights?" Greevey was asking her. She nodded. "You gotta say yes or no," Logan prompted.

"Yeah, yes, I understand my rights." Then Greevey handed her the purse and draped her jacket over her bound wrists.

"Just hang onto that. No need for the whole street to know our business, huh?" She nodded again, completely out of attitude.

When they dropped her off to be booked she turned before they left. "Thanks," she told them, absurdly. They looked awkwardly puzzled. "You know, I guess, for being as human as you could manage. Under the circumstances. Some cops would've slammed me against the bar or frisked me for weapons or something. Or yelled 'You're under arrest!' in front of everyone. I dunno. You've just been sort of, _reasonable_, through all this shit."

Both detectives looked at each other, then at Merry. Neither could come up with anything to say.

"It's okay. You're doing your job. You did good. You just did wrong." Then a female officer came and took her into booking, leaving Greevey and Logan staring at the closed door.

"Shit. I never had anyone thank me for busting them nicely," Logan muttered in disgust.

His partner was shaking his head. "Why do I feel like I just threw somebody off a cliff."

As they got into the car Logan mused, "I wonder who she'll draw for P.D.? It's a cinch she can't hire anyone. Most of that pool I wouldn't want if I was up for _shoplifting_ let alone murder."

"Let it go Mike, we're through here." Greevey sounded no more decisive than he felt. Logan was right, P.D.'s were mostly idealistic and fresh out of law school, long on social consciousness and very short on savvy. But there were a few exceptions.

"Hell, Max, we both know she didn't do it. It'd be nice to know she got a lawyer who maybe could do something about it."

Stone faced, Greevey responded, "Not that this is our business anymore. We are _through_. But that soap box jockey, what's her name, Green, she could raise a little hell with this."

Mike smiled across at Max. "And more than a match in the mouth department."

When Merry saw the tall, flamboyantly dressed black woman stride into the interview room at the women's prison she had no way of knowing that Shambala Green had been steered to this case by an "anonymous" tip from the 27th Precinct.

"Detective Logan, is that you?" Shambala had asked when she heard the familiar voice telling her of the newest addition to the docket. "Do you know what kind of shark infested waters you'll be swimming in if I report this call?"

"The kind you love to walk on," came the reply, just before the line went dead.

But things did not go smoothly. Shambala Green's typical defense style wasn't flying with this client.

"No way. We're not gonna go the 'I am victim' route. I am _not_ a victim. I'm just simply the wrong person to arrest, because I didn't do it."

"Look," Shambala told her, "we have to have some sort of defense here. The evidence the detectives have found,"

"Is circumstantial. Even I know that."

The other woman frowned. "Merry, people have gone up for 25 to life on less. All we have going for us is that you were terrorized by this creep, that he wouldn't leave you alone, and we have to convince the jury that because you couldn't get help from the police you felt you had to defend yourself."

Merry was resolute. "What we have _going_ for us is that I didn't _do _it."

The lawyer sighed. "Being noble and up-front isn't going to save you. I wish I could say it would. But we can maintain your innocence until a jury keels over from old age, and there is nothing to _prove_ it. The evidence is all on the other side here. You can plead diminished capacity, from being in fear for your life and so not thinking clearly. Your record is absolutely clean, you can get off with minimal time, maybe as little as two years."

"So what you're saying is the only way to save my ass is to say I did it and give them an excuse that'll make them let me off easier?"

"Basically."

"Tell me something, counselor," Merry asked with a sarcastic edge, "does perjury only count when you're _denying _guilt?"

Shambala Green met with Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone next day. The State wanted to deal, but she had to decline.

"She won't make a deal, Ben, she's insisting on going to court."

"But we'll _bury_ your client, haven't you explained that to her?"

"Over and over." Shambala laid both hands on the conference table and leaned toward Stone. "Ben, I think we have something here neither one of us is used to, a defendant who actually didn't do it. She won't budge. She'll sit through a trial and go up for the maximum sentence rather than admit to something she swears she didn't do. And I have to tell you, I believe her. I know you're used to me coming up with rationales for people going astray, but this one I believe. I honestly believe she had nothing to do with this guy's murder. In fact I'm _certain _of it."

Stone gestured with frustration. "But what can I do with that? It was _her_ weapon, _her_ fingerprints, _her _nemesis that wound up dead. No alibi even though there were dozens of witnesses available."

"In a crowded bar, full of people swilling mind-altering substances. Nobody saw her leave."

"And nobody saw her _stay_. Shambala, all I have to do to put her under is put on the stand anyone who was in the ladies' room from 12:20 to 12:45. _Nobody saw her_. The detectives talked to all of them."

"Ben it's clear you've never been in a barroom ladies' room on a Saturday night. Women talk about the hot guys they're after, they talk about how drunk they are. They gossip, and they are usually desperate to pee. How much attention do you think they'd pay to a staff member?"

"Great. You can use the Full Bladder Defense. Counselor unless you can make her see the light, your client is going to go down for Murder 2. I'd be willing to take a plea to Man 2 with special circumstances and sentencing recommendation because she has no record."

Shambala leaned back and shook her head. "Ben, even your own detectives don't believe she did it."

"My detectives won't be on the jury. Twelve average citizens will be, and they will see a grown woman who is a bouncer in a not-too-elegant bar, who deals with difficult and even dangerous people for a living. They aren't likely to believe that she was confronted by the victim in the middle of a working night, in an alley used only by junkies and garbage collectors, and was terrified into defending her life using a weapon that we both know was illegal to begin with. Are you _sure_ 'no deal' are your client's last words on this?"

"Well not quite. Her last words to me before I left were 'does perjury only count when you're _denying_ guilt'? She is not gonna plead out, Ben, and she isn't going to lift a legal finger to defend herself outside of maintaining her innocence."

Stone slapped the table in frustration. "What kind of point is she trying to make? With the evidence we have I'd be up before the disciplinary committee if I didn't prosecute. Look, why don't you bring her in. Maybe together we can make her listen to reason."

Merry found herself looking into yet another unfamiliar and concerned face. "Mr. Stone I want you to understand something. I'm not some enlightened purist standing up for principle here and I sure as hell am no martyr to the justice system. But I'm not stupid either. Whether I make a deal or not, odds are I'm going upstate, right? Well I'd rather do it against my will than with my assistance if it's all the same to you. I'm no big name, I don't have a fancy job. I don't have much at all, really, just a life I've managed to pull together out of experience and spare parts." She paused, gathering her thoughts. The two attorneys waited.

"I know it sounds impossibly old fashioned, counselors, but the one thing I have that I can't do without, I _can't_, is my reputation. People who know me, trust me. I have a good name, even if it doesn't travel far. Within certain parameters I can get hired by anybody by virtue of my resume and that good name. What do you suppose would happen to that if I plead guilty to killing someone, even a jerk that everyone hated? Even though I didn't do it, if I _say _I did it, I'm giving up every good thing I've collected under my name in my whole life. Like Shakespeare said, 'who steals my purse, steals trash'. All the personal wealth I've acquired is right here, " she tapped her chest with one hand and her head with the other. "If there's no reasonable doubt _in _the courtroom, I'll settle for it outside. Just maybe all the good things people think about me can remain good. Just maybe I might find something besides pity and turned backs waiting for me when I get out."

Ben Stone looked hard at her for a minute. "I wish you'd reconsider. You're no menace to society, Ms. Ryan, and I don't relish the thought of sending you to the women's penitentiary for fifteen to twenty-five years."

"You do what you have to do, Mr. Stone, and so will I."

The trial was speedy, she had to agree. Three days of police and witness testimony, half a day of deliberation. Shambala Green met with Merry while the jury was still out, trying one last time to get her to accept the deal offered by the D.A.'s office, manslaughter two with sentencing recommendation.

"Thanks, counselor, but even if I'm the only one who believes my story I'm also the only one I know I have to spend the rest of my life with. I don't wanna look in the mirror and see a liar. Or a coward."

The guilty verdict surprised nobody. As the bailiff turned her to be escorted out of the courtroom to the waiting prison van, Merry looked past a disheartened Shambala Green (and the equally unhappy D.A.'s table) and was surprised to see one of the detectives, Mike Logan, leaning against the doorjamb by the courtroom door. His expression was a duplicate of the defense attorney's: unhappy, and frustrated. Their eyes met briefly. Merry shrugged and smiled wanly. Logan didn't respond, just straightened and left with the others.

What did surprise everyone involved was the appearance of Death of Me bouncer and bartender Joey Attardo, escorted by Shambala Green, in Ben Stone's office three days after Meredith Ryan's slam-dunk but wholly uncelebrated conviction.

"Ben, Mr. Attardo has something he needs to discuss with you. I'm here as his attorney." Her voice held an uncharacteristic chill.

Curious, Stone stood and waved the pair into chairs opposite his desk. "Should I have a stenographer come in?" The dark, burly, guy on Shambala's left looked spooked, and sick.

"Look, you gotta know, Merry didn't kill anyone. She didn't do it." Stone's exasperation was immediately evident.

"So everyone has said, from Ms. Ryan to Ms. Green to the arresting detectives. Unfortunately, Mr. Attardo, the legal system needs a little more to go on than the repetitive say-so of a parade of hunch-followers."

Joey looked to Shambala, whose expression was as stern as a convicting judge. "Tell Mr. Stone what you told me." Silence. "Joey, you can't let this go on any longer, _tell_ him."

Still unable to look Stone in the eye, Joey mumbled "I know she didn't kill Brian O'Connor."

"_How_ do you know?" Stone was rising from his chair, ready to throw this punk out before he any wasted more of his time.

"Because I did it."

Stone fell back into his seat as if pushed. "You did it." He shot a look at Shambala. "It's a little late to come up with an alternative theory for the crime."

Joey was insistent, leaning forward on the desk. "You gotta believe me. I knew he was bothering Merry. I knew he was threatening her, following her. She didn't tell me a whole lot, but I could figure it out. I believed her. We all did."

Still skeptical, Stone challenged, "So in order to protect Ms. Ryan, you framed her for murder?" Again he looked in dismay at Shambala Green, who waited stonily for Attardo to continue.

"No, no. I figured if you thought _she_ did it, she'd get off for self defense, you know? That once it came out how he stalked her, the jury would let her off."

"How noble." Stone's tone was icy. "But would you mind telling me how you came to have Ms. Ryan's knife the night of the murder, since you told the police you were on vacation all that week?"

"I _was _on vacation, but I didn't go away like I said I was gonna. I told everyone I was going to Boston to visit some friends and party. And I did go, for a few days, but came back early and just laid low."

Stone wasn't convinced. "Low enough to get into the bar on the night in question, take Ms. Ryan's knife from her bag in the office, go out to the alley from the office, all without being seen by anyone on a busy night?"

"I had it already. I took the knife out of Merry's bag the Friday before." In response to unwavering disbelief, he hastily added, "Well it's not as if she used it all the time! It was just there, she knew it was there, in case of trouble on the way home or something. I knew that, and I knew she probably wouldn't miss it. I called O'Connor from a pay phone the night before, told him I'd pay him off to leave town, to leave her alone. He had plenty of money but always was a greedy bastard. Money was power, you know? And having someone buy him off was a real rush. I said meet me in the alley out back of the club, and don't tell anyone or the deal was off."

"So you set this plan up, not caring that the friend you claim to have been defending would go down for murder."

"No, man, I didn't _plan_ to kill him. I wanted to mess him up some, scare him. People like him are always cowards, you know? I figured I'd flash the knife, get him to back down." In answer to the unasked question he added, "I took Merry's knife because it was handy, I don't have anything like that and figured I'd just put it back when I came back to work. Simple."

"Oh, yeah, real simple. So if you didn't plan on killing Mr. O'Connor, exactly how did he end up dead?"

Joey shook his head, remembering. "Stupid asshole, showing off to who knows who. Giving himself another story to tell, maybe. Anyway he told me to fuck off, then he tried to take the knife. He also tried to hit me at the same time. My hand came up, and the knife connected. I wasn't thinking really clear after that, I took off."

"Was Mr. O'Connor alive when you left him there?"

Now Joey snorted derisively. "Like that would matter to anyone."

"It would matter to a jury. The difference between leaving him dead and leaving him _for_ dead is a big one," Shambala warned him.

He shrugged. "I don't know, I swear. I just left him lying there, and took off. Later I figured I'd keep my mouth shut, that if Merry got busted she'd be let off because of the harassment."

"it seems Mr. Attardo overestimated the weight of Merry's good word," Shambala observed drily. "But now that he knows she's in jail for five to fifteen years, he's up for a change of plans."

"She never hurt anybody," Joey said ruefully. "No way I could leave this the way it is."

"Admirable," said Stone, Abut it leaves us where we've been all along. Long on words, and short on evidence."

"Gloves. I was wearing leather gloves. I didn't get rid of them, just cleaned the blood off. You guys are good at finding what's been cleaned off."

"Ben, he's telling the truth. While Logan and Greevey are checking out his story and forensics is checking out his gloves, why don't you call a judge. That woman doesn't need to spend another night in jail over this."

Stone made the call, to the precinct and the judge. When Don Cragen handed his two best detectives their new assignment, it was with no apology.

"Your hunch was right." Smug looks in response. "Hey, the day we run on hunches we'll _all_ be rooming in Danemora, okay? Just get the warrant and get the guy's stuff."

Max turned to Mike with a knowing smile. "So, you gonna break the speed record upstate?"

His partner (weakly) protested, "What? I didn't deal with this any different than you, Max."

"Uh-huh."

It took a couple of days to process the release paperwork. Merry's relief at being exonerated was more than overwhelmed by the knowledge that someone she thought was her friend had stood by and let her go through all this shit. She'd thought Joey had seemed odd when he came to visit her just two days after her arrival in prison. He seemed to be struggling with something, though at the time she'd thought he was just upset by her imprisonment. When he told her what he'd done, she was blind with rage and hurt.

"You fucking asshole," she snarled, "you set me up?" She wouldn't listen to the rationale he'd outlined for the D.A. "Fuck that shit, Joey, don't make this sound like you were doing me a favor. If you'd had any balls you would've helped me make a case against Brian, you'd have backed me up. So what I didn't tell you every little thing, you knew I was being followed and threatened." Silence on the other end of the phone. "So I guess _you're_ gonna go up for a whole lot more than I did, huh? Murder, obstructing justice, blah, blah. Well don't expect a fucking visit from me, you dickless low life. I've had enough of your 'friendship'. Shit, Joey, nobody you could call a friend would do this to me." She meant every razor-edged word, but inside had never felt so betrayed or abandoned. Joey was the one person she had let come the closest, never a question of romance and he never expected any, they worked together and watched each other's backs, shared some secrets and lies and fuck-all he _knew_ her. And he'd dropped her off the cliff to save his own ass. And if she hadn't been convicted, he'd have kept up the lie forever and figured it was worth it even after all she'd been put through.

"Will you be in court?" he asked lamely.

"If I am, it's only to see them take you away. Now fuck off and don't you _ever_ call me again."

The rage was still burning in her the next day when she was given her things and a bus ticket back to Manhattan. They'd asked if there was anyone she wanted to call and she said no. Nobody at the bar she felt comfortable to inconvenience. Nobody but Joey. Under the anger was a pain like a twisting knife. The best friend she'd had threw her to the wolves. She meant every evil word she'd said to Joey, sure, but already she missed having a best friend. When she was dropped at the bus station she checked her ticket to find she'd have at least an hour to wait. Wandering around the unfamiliar station, the last person she expected to see was the one who emerged from the coffee shop, two cups in hand.

"Detective Logan. Dropping someone off at the Big House?" By reflex she took the paper cup he handed to her.

"Black, right?"

"Thanks. You didn't answer my question. What brings you to the middle of penal nowhere? And why does someone provided with elegant wheels at taxpayer expense need a bus?"

He gave up any attempt to be clever. "Thought you might need a lift home."

She waved her ticket. "Taxpayers covered me, too."

"Don't tell me you're above a little double-dipping."

Merry put her bag down and regarded the detective with a suspicious stare. "Really, you drove all the way up here to gimme a ride home? What the fuck for?"

Mike's smile tightened a little. "Look, can you switch on the safety for a minute? I'm trying to be a nice guy here, believe me if I wanted to take advantage of someone there are plenty of women around who wouldn't burn up half a tank of gas."

For some reason his irritation reassured her. She took a slug of coffee, her first of the day. "Okay, you're right. I'm a little edgy. I lost my best friend this week, and the wounds are fresh. Sorry if I'm not seeming particularly grateful for your interest."

"Your best friend?" They were still standing in the middle of the terminal, people and P.A. announcements all around.

Merry jerked her head in the general direction of the prison. "You know, the one who's filling my space here, only in the men's section. The one who set me up. The one who sold me out. He _said _he was my best friend, once upon a time."

Mike had started walking toward the parking lot and Merry picked up her bag and followed instinctively. "Look, maybe Joey just isn't real bright, you know? He really might have thought he was doing the right thing, even if it was incredibly stupid."

"I wish I could believe that. I just don't get how he could toss me to the sharks like that."

They were at the car, Mike holding the door for her as he took her bag and flung it over the front seat. "Well he didn't, in the end, did he? Soon as he knew you were really going down he went to your lawyer and confessed. If he'd really thrown you to the sharks we wouldn't be standing here."

Merry finished the last of the coffee and crumpled the cup and tossed it into an overflowing trash barrel nearby.

"So you're saying I oughta patch it up with him or something?"

He shrugged. "That's up to you. I'm saying maybe you shouldn't take it so personally, you know? People make stupid mistakes all the time, and some of them are intense. Trust me, I see it every day. I'm just saying it's probably more about him than you." He shut the door quietly as she got in, then got behind the wheel.

"I can't give you any gas money," Merry warned him, "I had to spend my five bucks on cab fare."

"No problem," Mike answered with a laugh, "the taxpayers are picking it up."

"No, really, I hate owing people."

Mike shrugged. "So lend me your Clapton. Crossroads."

"Vinyl or cd?" She had Crossroads in both formats.

"Why the hell would I wanna borrow the cd?"

She sat up straighter. "You mean you have a turntable? What kind? One of them little plastic play things that fall apart if you look at 'em funny?"

"KLH. Model 24. Classic, FM tuner, three-speed belt driven. Got any more smartass questions?"

Merry settled back in her seat and turned a smartass grin toward the detective she was beginning to like way too much.

"Yeah. Are we there yet?"


	4. A match made in homicide

"So when are you two going out?"

His partner's know-it-all smile made Logan squirm for more than one reason. "Well I haven't actually asked her yet."

Max jumped up and leaned over his desk. "Are you kidding? It's been a week since you played private chauffeur from upstate, and the Casanova of the 27th hasn't made his move?" He sat down again, clucking in exaggerated dismay. "I'm disappointed, Mikey. And _gravely_ concerned."

"Knock it off, will ya?" Mike tried to put on a logical demeanor as he lied through his teeth. "She just got back from a really lousy experience, Max. Sure, we hit it off, and she even lent me some records when I dropped her off. But I figure I'll give it a little time to adjust, you know?"

Now Greevey relented a little. He was only now realizing that Logan's motivation was out of his normal range, surprising even himself. "So have you at least called her?"

"She called _me_, last night."

"Well at least you gave her your number."

"Oh, she's _got_ my number, believe me…" Logan muttered to himself, then added aloud, "I'm in the book, remember? And she called to ask when she'd get her records back."

Uh-huh, Max thought. He was betting that Merry Ryan was more on top of this situation than his typically skirt-chasing partner, who seemed positively disoriented by his own changing attitude toward women. This woman, anyway. "And you said…?"

"What are you, my mother?" Logan covered his embarrassment with an impatient gesture and rooted through his in basket for paperwork.

"Nah, your mother would keel over if she knew you wanted to go out with a bouncer-ex-con." His wicked smile was returning, and Logan picked up on it at last.

"Now there's a thought. Maybe I'll call her right now."

"Merry?"

"Ma."

Max shook his head and laughed, sorting through his own desktop to find his notebook for the interview notes he needed. "You're going straight to hell to burn for eternity, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars."

"Been there, done that," Logan yawned, "or have you forgotten about my mother's parenting skills?"

Deciding to play fair, Max regarded Logan more seriously. "Look, Mike, we both know that your interest is a little out of the, uh, established pattern this time. What's wrong with that?"

"Well yeah," he confessed. "All that ride back from the prison, all I could think about was how easy she was to talk with, how much I wanted to _keep_ talking, to actually get to _know_ her." He sat up a straighter, shook his head. "Suddenly _I'm_ gravely concerned about me. I mean, what's so different about this one? It's not like I haven't met women on the job before that I wanted to know."

Greevey laughed. "Yeah but it was always in the biblical sense. Hey, really, _everything _about this is different, isn't it? You never got interested in a _suspect_, in an arrest, and when was the last time you wanted to keep _talking_? Something different isn't necessarily screwy, have you considered maybe it's just a sign you're growing up?"

"Gee thanks, dad."

"You know what I mean. Anyway, why ask why? You wanna talk to her, talk to her. You wanna go out with her, ask her out. Take it one step at a time. _That's_ a new one for you, for sure."

Logan nodded in agreement. "For the first time I can remember I can't even picture the finish line, let alone shoot for it." His partner was nodding too, the knowing smile not smug at all.

"I was wondering when you'd figure out life isn't a race."

* * *

"Hello, is Merry there?"

Merry rolled her eyes as she recognized the voice. Lame, lamer, lamest, she thought, trying to ignore the shot of adrenaline. "Last I knew she was the only one lives here. How ya doing, detective? Buff the scratches out of my Clapton and B.B. King yet?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means you've had them long enough to re-master 'em. So I figure you're stalling for a reason."

"Man, you are one suspicious broad." But he was smiling.

"You of all people should figure I've earned the right. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Well as a matter of fact it is about Clapton."

"I _knew_ it!" she cut in, then asked "What's the sentence for kicking a cop's ass?"

"Will you cut it out for a minute?" She wasn't making this easy… like he expected her to? "Crossroads is in mint condition. I mean Clapton is playing at the Garden this weekend, and these tickets kind of fell into my lap, and I was wondering if you'd like to go. Shame to waste the extra one on someone with no appreciation." What a fat-assed lie. He'd paid half a week's salary – half of that borrowed from Max – to buy primo seats from a scalper they'd busted last year who was (naturally) back in business already.

"_Are you serious??"_ Merry couldn't keep the high-pitched squeak out of her voice.

"Should I take that as a yes?"

"Detective, if you can get me into a Clapton concert I may just kind of fall into your lap myself."

"Well in that case I can sell the extra seat."

"You do and I _will_ kick your ass. So tell me when and where?"

The concert was on Friday, but she knew then and there she would get the night off or die trying. She agreed it would be easier to meet Mike at the precinct so they could grab a pizza and head straight to the Garden.

"No problem, detective, I remember the way."

"Look, can you stop calling me that? For real. It makes me feel like I'm always at work."

Oops. "Sure Mike, sorry. But you'll forgive me if I bypass interrogation when I come in this time."

"Depends on what you get up to between now and then. Come by about 5:30."

"Okay, see ya then."

As she switched off the phone Merry wondered what the _hell_ took him so long? Not that she'd never asked a guy out before when she was interested, but she felt an unaccustomed caution regarding this one. A need not to make a wrong move and screw it up, whatever "it" was. She had no way of knowing Mike Logan, Casanova of the 27th, was needing exactly the same thing.

* * *

On the way up the stairs to the bullpen on Friday night Merry nearly collided with Ben Stone. Both were taken aback, not immediately sure what to say.

Finally Merry managed, "Hey counselor, how's business?"

"Ms. Ryan, I want you to know I'm sorry for the trouble you've been through." He wasn't apologizing for prosecuting her, he'd really had no choice after all, but he wanted her to understand he hadn't considered it any kind of victory.

"Yeah, well, you have to go by the rules don't you? And you tried hard to give me a break, I just didn't want it. Now at least you know why. No hard feelings, though?" She wondered if he thought she'd been a righteous pain in the ass with all of her Shakespeare-quoting non-cooperation. Not that she'd agree with that, but still he'd just been doing what he thought was right, and he _had_ wanted to give her a break as much as he was able to without getting his own ass in trouble.

"I hope not." He took her outstretched hand and shook it. "You were right, we both did what we had to do. But what brings you back here? More forms to sign?"

"Nope, I'm going to see Eric Clapton with one of my arresting officers." His confused expression made her laugh as she went past him up the stairs. "Hey, at least he's sober and single. More than I can say for most of the guys I meet at work."

Stone supposed he'd heard and seen everything in his line of work. Well _almost_ everything, he acknowledged, shaking his head and continuing on his way. Considering the pathetic excuses for romance whose aftermaths he'd prosecuted the A.D.A. figured a match made during a homicide investigation stood as good a chance as any other. Maybe even better, considering the parties involved.


	5. Diversions

The bullpen was surprisingly quiet, considering it was time for shift change. Merry found Mike's partner Max alone at the twin desks, apparently working on a report.

"Hey, Detective Greevey, I'm here to meet Mike." She looked around; the few faces in evidence were somewhat grim. No jokes or smartmouth, which she'd noticed on her earlier visit even with the distraction of the matter at hand. Greevey looked up, and then looked uneasy.

"Yeah, hi Merry. Mike had to go, he left these," he handed her a ticket envelope.

Two tickets to that night's Clapton show were inside, no note. Merry raised an eyebrow and noted drily, "I gave up married cops for Lent. What gives? Your partner get a better offer?"

Instead of responding in cynical kind Greevey motioned to the "interview" seat next to his desk. "Have a seat for a minute, okay? It's not what you think."

"No offense, Detective, but you're an unlikely choice for a go-between. Unless of course you've gotten good at this."

"Max, call me Max, okay?" His smile was weak but sincere. "Look, we had a real ugly case today. I can't tell you too much but it involved a little girl, and parents who both look good for an arrest if they can stop blaming each other _and_ the kid long enough to answer questions."

Since she knew she was sitting in the middle of homicide hell, Merry also knew that if this were the reason for the general dark mood it had to have been very ugly indeed. "I guess that means the little girl got killed… or worse?"

"Yes to both."

"And your partner left you to clean up the paperwork." No matter the explanation, this wasn't making Mike Logan look great right now. Greevey was shaking his head negative.

"No, that's not it. Look, I know you know we deal with this crap all the time, but some days it just reaches critical mass. Different cops, different days."

"And today was Mike's?"

_She catches on fast,_ Max thought. He nodded. "Bingo. Some kinds of cases just ruin you for the world, for a while anyway. He didn't want to drag you down and he didn't want you to miss the concert either. So he left these for you and headed home." Seeing the doubtful look on Merry's face, he continued, "Don't get the wrong idea. He's not drowning his sorrows or sitting in the dark. That was his father's game. Mikey," and Merry smiled inwardly at the warmth expressed in that one word, "he's not like some guys who take it out on everyone, banging drawers and slamming the keyboard. He takes it home and lets it run itself out."

"Sounds hard." _So his father is a cop too._ She didn't think she'd ever in her life met a first-generation cop.

"It is. Especially when you don't have anyone to take it home _to_. But there aren't that many people who can tell when talking about it just makes it worse."

"I think I know what you mean. What sucks will always suck. Sometimes all you can do is create a diversion."

_She does catch on. Or maybe she knows it already. Christ, I hope these two are smart enough not to screw it up…_ "Bingo again. But not many people can tell when it's time for what," he repeated, hoping he was right about her.

Noticing, not for the first time, the heavy gold wedding ring on the beefy left hand Merry suggested, "Bet your wife can tell, huh?" For a moment she was sure she said too much, but Greevey smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, Marie is fluent in when and what. Anyway, don't take it personally okay? And don't tell him I said you should give it another chance. Assuming you can handle the first don't."

"Lots of don'ts, if you ask me. What if I don't, the last thing? Give it another chance? I mean I'm no drama queen but getting stood up on a first date isn't exactly a good omen."

A shrug, almost offhand. "Well if you _take_ it as an omen after what I just told you, I guess you'd be smarter to say 'don't' to all of it."

Merry cocked her head, and studied Greevey through narrowed eyes. "Why do I get the feeling the 'your loss' is silent?"

He told her honestly, "Not just _your_ loss. And that's all I'm gonna say. Now take off, I got reports to finish."

"And someone waiting at home to create a diversion?" She wasn't stupid enough to buy the philosophical act, not entirely, and wasn't surprised at the weary sigh she got in response.

"Yeah, that too. Thank god."

Merry rose from the chair and slipped the tickets in her pocket. "So is it against any law to tell me how I can find Logan's place by subway?"

Greevey didn't like what he thought he was hearing. "If you're gonna chew him out I'd do it by phone, at least then he can hang up on you."

"Max," Merry leaned against the side of his desk, "I think I've got a handle on the first don't. And I'd like to have a chance to work on the second."

Relieved, Max smiled shrewdly. "A diversion?"

"If it's appropriate. Let's face it sometimes the smartest thing is to walk away until what _doesn't_ suck regains control."

Max stood and laid a friendly hand on her shoulder. "Young lady, I'd say you stand a very good chance with don't #2." He wrote down something on the back of a blank report form. "Here's the way to Mike's. And if I never see you again, it's been a pleasure."

"Likewise, I'm sure. Well the second part anyway." She laughed and shook his hand. "I'd say he's lucky to have you."

As she headed for the stairs Max smiled to himself, "Likewise, I'm sure."

* * *

When the buzzer rang, Mike almost jumped out of his skin. Little did Max know he was only half right; Logan wasn't boozing but his apartment was all-but-dark. Just the small lamp on the end table for light, since he'd abandoned the latest Ed McBain book he'd been trying to read. He waited, not wanting to get up and go to the intercom. Probably somebody hitting the wrong one anyway.

_Buzzzz._

He waited some more.

Buzzzz, buzzzz-buzzzz-bzz-bzz…bz-bz.

What psycho was playing shave-and-a-haircut on his bell? He strode to the intercom and pushed "call".

"Get a life, loser!"

The speaker sprang to life. "Excuse _me_? Who left who holding the bag tonight? I mean the _envelope._ The least you coulda done is write some lame note instead of making your partner take the heat."

Ah, shit. "Look, Merry, I'm sorry. I'm not usually this big a jerk, but I'm lousy company tonight."

"Yeah I heard. Don't worry, not _too_ much. But enough."

"So why aren't you rocking to Clapton?"

"Because by the time I got through trashing the bullpen, it was too late to get to Madison."

She was nuts, completely, he decided then and there. And he also realized he had no clue how much was true and how much was bullshit. If any of it was.

BZZZ-BZZZ-BZZZ-BZZ-BZZ… BZ-BZ!

"Hey, cut it out, will you?"

"Or you'll call the cops? Come on, Mike, you gotta let me in. I can't eat all this pizza by myself." As her voice lowered to a confidential whisper Logan had to strain to hear. "And I'm nervous as hell about carrying all this cash on the subway. I'm lucky I made it here alive. Shit, I thought _my_ neighborhood was seedy!"

Pizza? Cash? What the hell? Before she could start playing another buzzer symphony Mike hit the "call" button. "Look, you can't just show up at my place and waltz in unannounced."

"Sorry, should I go back for a warrant? Come on, you've seen every inch of my place and everything I own. It's my turn."

Mike heard muffled voices in the background and then Merry snapping, "My cell phone's dead, okay? What's it to you anyway?"

Christ, he'd better let her in before she got in a brawl with the punks who lived downstairs.

"Okay, okay! Elevator's up the hall on the right. I'll meet you."

"I'm fine."

"It's not _you_ I'm worried about."

When the elevator doors slid open he saw at least part of it wasn't bullshit. Merry was juggling two pizza boxes as she tried to beat the doors before they shut again.

"Hey. Hope I'm not interrupting anything," she told him as he led the way to his door. "Oh no, _that's_ okay, I can manage these _just_ _fine_," she muttered just before he took the pizza boxes from her and stood aside to let her enter.

"Wow, Max is a big fat liar. You _are_ sitting in the dark."

Mike hit a wall switch and a ceiling fixture lit the room. It was a little bigger than hers, old-style New York apartment with plaster walls and wood doorframes. Pretty neat and tidy for a single guy.

"Where's your La-z-boy?" she wanted to know. "_All_ cops have a La-z-boy, right?"

"He was sitting on the sofa until you started playing the minute waltz on his doorbell," Mike took the pizzas into the small kitchen and pulled plates out of the cabinet, then paused to consider the two huge pies. "Sure you brought enough? Maybe I should call in the neighbors."

"I think I scared 'em away."

Finally Mike smiled, then snickered. "I think you're right. They talk large and wuss larger."

Merry took the plates from Mike and stood back to let him bring another plate piled high with slices, pepperoni monster special and veggie monster special, back to set on the coffee table. The table looked like he might have taken it from home when he moved out. The sofa was big and cushy, and she could picture him flopping out on it after a long day of mayhem. Against the opposite wall was an entertainment center that featured a mid-size TV and an impressive stereo system.

"Wow, you were telling the truth," she murmured appreciatively as she examined the receiver and speakers.

"I never lie to a suspect," he told her with a straight face. "Well sit down, will ya, you're making nervous."

When she'd settled on the sofa, a respectable distance between them, Mike regarded Merry for a silent moment. "You're not asking me if I want to 'talk about it'?"

"About what?" Stupid line, so she continued, "Nah, I'm a bouncer, not a bartender. A bartender would get you to talk about it."

They chowed down for a couple of minutes before Mike asked, "So what would a bouncer do?"

Merry dropped another slice on his empty plate. "Feed you pizza, I guess."

In short order they were properly stuffed, and Merry followed Mike to the kitchen to pile the remaining slices in one of the boxes, leaving him to fold up the empty and jam it in the trash.

"I'd offer you a beer but I drank the last one."

"Aha," Merry raised a finger in revelation, "he lied about _that_ too!"

Mike pulled a "huh" face. "Do you _always_ talk in code?"

"Only when I'm being followed." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. "Here, use this to pay back whoever 'dropped the tickets in your lap'."

Mike's eyes widened as he counted. "Two hundred and fifty bucks?" He gaped at her. "Silly me, and all this time I thought scalping was _illegal_."

Merry shrugged, "Don't ask, don't tell. Pretty versatile policy, huh?" They were standing in the living room and he was nailing her with a half-unamused look that was becoming familiar. "Okay, I lied about trashing the bullpen. I got to Madison and said 'who needs tickets, I got two', and some guy shoved this roll into my hand and took 'em. I swear to god, Mike, that's the truth. He didn't even ask how much."

"Don't ask don't tell, huh?"

They stood a little awkwardly, saying nothing for a moment until Mike offered, "Well don't eat and run, have a seat and we won't talk about it."

Merry fished in her bag and pulled out two DVD's. "Don't you wanna know what happens next?"

He put on a worried face. "I think I'm afraid to ask." He indicated what she had in her hand. "Chinese roller derby?"

"Uh-uh," and she held them up proudly, The Roaring Twenties, and White Heat. "Cagney double feature. Time for you wuss gold shields to see how the _real_ tough guys do it!" It had been a calculated risk, but the grin that erupted on Mike's face told her it paid off.

"Cagney? My old man loved that stuff. Watched them on the late show every weekend. It was one of the only times ma left us alone." There was a wealth of subtext there, but Merry ignored it for now.

"Irish cop, go figure," she cracked as he loaded the first one. "Since we're grownups and don't have to work in the morning, we get to stay up as late as we want! Don't worry," she headed off the question, "I can afford a cab home. I held back fifty. Now hit the lights, okay?"

They sat mostly in silence for the next four hours except for occasionally reciting snatches of dialogue aloud, usually in unison. Each shot furtive sidelong smiles they believed went unnoticed.

The last credits faded and Mike announced as he turned on the end table lamp, "Made it Ma, top of the world!" No reply. Looking more closely at Merry, who'd slouched comfortably against the opposite end of the sofa, Mike saw she was sound asleep. She looked, as most sleeping women did, like something resembling an angel, all smartass attitude smoothed away. The little girl's face flashed into his head, how peaceful it looked just before the doctor pulled the sheet up to cover it. He realized he hadn't beaten himself with that image since Merry had arrived, and knew for a fact it would have been his sole companion tonight if she hadn't. He went to the hall closet and pulled out the Aran afghan his grandma had knitted as a Christmas present the year before she died. Then he returned to the living room and slid Merry's shoes, long ago shed, under the coffee table and spread the afghan over her.

Psycho broad, he thought to himself with a weary shake of his head. Then he paused a moment and smiled, whispering, "Two bits…" and shut off the light before trudging down the hall to bed.


	6. Invasion of the body snatchers

Mike woke with a jerk. A bleary glance at the clock told him it was a few minutes after two. Great, he'd had a whole 45 minutes of sleep and now he could stare at the digital numbers changing for awhile. Usually once he was down he was out until the alarm went off, even after a hellacious day like this one, but if he woke up it took him at least half an hour to pass out again. He wondered what felt out of place, and it took him a minute or two to remember he had a guest. A female guest, and on the freaking sofa. _That's_ what woke him up, the thundering crash of change. That, and a raging case of heartburn caused by way too much pepperoni monster pizza (he passed on the veggie monster) eaten way too late in a way too stressful day. He rolled out of bed with a grunt and headed to the bathroom to get some Alka Seltzer. Not bothering with the light, he fumbled in the medicine cabinet and ripped open the little foil envelope into a half-full water glass and left it to fizz on the edge of the sink while he took a leak. He hit the handle and downed the medicine, hoping for a miracle cure. None was immediately forthcoming, though he did manage a stifled belch. Padding halfway down the hall, he stretched around the corner to check on Merry. There was the afghan; there were the shoes under the coffee table. No Merry, though. Well there aren't a whole lot of other places to go in this cracker box, he thought to himself, and figured the kitchen was worth a shot.

He was right. Before he got through the doorway he saw her standing by the stove, staring out the tall window that looked out on the open area in back that passed for a tenant parking lot (as if anybody was crazy enough to leave a car there). The mercury vapor lights that didn't discourage much of anyone from much of anything shone through the window like some cheap electric moon. What the hell was she staring at? He wasn't sure how to approach her without scaring her to death.

"Sorry if I woke you," she said.

Mike jumped a mile. "_Christ_! You could warn a person before you give them a heart attack." When she turned around the backlight kept most of her face invisible, leaving just a weird halo around her head.

"Sorry," she repeated. He was dressed in sweatpants and a ratty NYPD t-shirt, thick dark hair sticking out all over. He looked about 12 years old. He looked good enough to make her catch her breath.

"You okay? My gut is doing the rhumba too, I got some stuff in the bathroom."

She shook her head. The truth was Merry wasn't quite sure why she woke up. Once she was halfway conscious, though, the narrow confines of the sofa made her think, just for a second, she was back in that women's prison upstate on that skinny little bed in a strange place. Well she was in a strange place, all right. She'd managed to grope her way to the bathroom without making a racket, and had groped her way back to the living room when the spill of the light from the kitchen window caught her attention. Moonlight, she thought, but stood corrected once she got to the funny little window in a place you wouldn't expect a window to be, sandwiched between the stove and the cabinets, too narrow for a table.

"I'm fine. I just was noticing the view. I know it sounds a little weird, but the way the streetlight shines on all that broken glass is kind of cool."

Mike blinked. Weird? Not much. "Uh, right, the postcards are bestsellers at the bodega down the street." Merry turned back to the window without comment.

"Sorry." He went to the window and stood next to Merry, surprised to see what looked like millions of diamonds scattered sparkling on the ground. Not much else was visible within the wedge of streetlight, and nothing at all beyond. "Hey, you're right. It looks like a whole different place. Thank god." After a minute he remembered to ask. "So what woke you up? I gave you my excuse."

Merry turned to look up at Mike, strangely comfortable in spite of their close proximity and the odd situation. "I thought I was back in jail," she said simply.

Mike's instinct was to crack wise, thanks a lot, but there was something haunted in her eyes so instead he acknowledged, "That was hard, having to be there even for a few days."

Was. Not "must have been", not "I know it was". Merry was mindful of the most predictable benign responses she could have heard, but didn't.

"It was that. But the reason why was harder." She still held that part inside, never talking about it to her coworkers. She played mad as hell, and was, but kept the cut-to-the-bone part to herself until now. Somehow she knew this was a safe time and place to open the door a little wider, sure he wouldn't jump too far in.

"Yeah. Getting screwed goes to a whole new level when it's a friend doing it."

That's not what he'd said upstate. "Whatever happened to not taking it personally? All that 'it's not about you, it's about him' crap?"

"That was before."

"Before what?"

"Before I saw that look on your face I just saw." Mike surprised himself by touching Merry's cheek with light fingers. She surprised herself by not jumping him then and there. More was going on here than hormones, and whatever it was had to be left at its own speed. "Besides," he continued, "some things deserve to be taken personally." He caught himself and added, "But not _everything_. Just some things. I mean... you know what I mean."

The mini-spell was broken by his awkward verbal tap dance, and Merry laughed. "It's okay, I know what you mean. In fact it's kind of scary, I think I've always known what you mean. If I had any doubts, you killed 'em when you cuffed me." She also had zero doubt that he, too, knew exactly what _she_ meant. That nanosecond's delay as he steadied her hands, making sure his partner didn't see. Or maybe it was the spontaneity that convinced her. Unplanned moments, she figured, were a rarity for Mike Logan. She could read that tendency a mile away, because she shared it.

He smiled, almost. "Busted. You should pardon the expression." Suddenly they both yawned in perfect unison, then cracked up. Also in perfect unison.

"I'm good to go back to sleep," Merry confessed, and shuffled back to the sofa with Mike trailing behind. Please don't ask me to join you somewhere more comfortable, she begged silently. Please don't start rushing the game when I'm so likely to fold. He didn't disappoint her.

"Fine by me. You need anything?"

"Nah." She settled on the sofa and pulled up the afghan. "Crisis hour is over." He looked confused, so she explained, "Crisis hour. For me it's 2am, always. Anything leftover from the day that's gonna wake me up comes calling at 2am, guaranteed."

"Uh-huh. You are one psycho broad, you know that?" he smiled down at her.

"Some people use the other 'b' word. But I'll take a break if I can get it." Merry smiled inwardly as she felt Mike pull the bottom of the afghan down and tuck it under her feet.

"Consider it gotten," he assured her. "And my crisis hours tend to come by ambush. Maybe you can teach me how to schedule them nice and neat."

"Sure," the sleepy promise faded in his ears as he went down the hall to the bedroom. Just before going in he turned and looked back in the direction of the living room. Compared to his usual dates this one qualified as science fiction. The Body Snatchers. Yeah, he thought as he crawled back into bed, somebody has snatched Mike Logan and replaced him with a lookalike who doesn't think with his gonads. Who knew the change would feel so natural, even if it was loud enough to wake the dead.


	7. Back to work

"C'mon Logan, give! How did your date with Ms. Catch-and-Release go?" Profaci, like Greevey, wanted to hear all the details. The difference was he was hoping for the typical kiss (etc.) and tell, while Max was hoping to hear something a little less superficial.

"She's not a fish, Profaci. And you know I went home early, we didn't go to the concert."

Mike was being unusually tight-lipped for a guy who was known to broadcast his conquests far and wide, and without delay. Profaci wasn't only disappointed, he was confused. "Jesus, Mike, you keeping it for your memoirs? All I asked is how it went." His face was plastered with the same "who me?" expression as every perp they walked into lockup.

Swallowing a gulp of coffee, Mike riveted his colleague with the look that said Shut Up. The look that nobody much argued with, mostly because there was no point. "It went fine. We had pizza and a movie. Happy? Or do you wanna have me dusted for prints?"

"Jesus, what a mood," Profaci muttered as he slouched away to get some work done. "She shut him down," he winked at another detective, and returned to his desk.

After a respectable period of silent paperwork Max observed rather too brightly, "Pizza and a movie, that doesn't sound bad." He knew that Mike knew he wasn't dredging for details, at least not the same kind as the rest of the squad. "Considering what you'd planned for yourself, I mean. I figured the worst that could happen, you'd tell her to get lost."

Logan rolled his head in reluctant acknowledgment. "Yeah, well, I think you're lying through your teeth now." He looked up from his papers straight at his partner. "I think you knew nobody was gonna get lost."

A worried frown was the first response. "So it was a bad idea, huh?"

Now Logan dropped his pencil and leaned forward, looking very serious. "No Max, that's just it. It was a great idea. She showed up with two pizzas and two Cagney movies. And this," he handed a wad of cash to Greevey. "She found a buyer for the tickets. Or he found her, according to her."

Max whistled as he counted the bills. "Mikey, this is way more than you borrowed from me. Not that I'm gonna turn her in." His partner was shaking his head.

"Keep it, you earned it. If she hadn't come by I'd have spent the night reading page ten of McBain a thousand times and trying to forget that little girl's face and how much I wanna pop her parents. So instead I ate too much pizza and watched Cagney be a bad guy's bad guy for a few hours."

"You talk about it?"

"No," Mike told him in a wondering voice, "she said only bartenders get you to talk. Bouncers feed you pizza." Max was smiling, Buddha-like. "What?"

"Nothin. So?"

"So we pigged out and watched two movies. Or _I_ watched two movies. She fell asleep halfway through the second one." He paused, then looked earnestly again at Max, his eyes a little wider. "She spent the night on the sofa, Max. I spent the night in the bedroom. No discussion. No tapdancing around do we or don't we. I just covered her up with the afghan and went to bed."

Max's smile had widened considerably. "Mikey, I'd say you've achieved a breakthrough. Unless of course you just weren't interested."

"Oh, I was interested. In fact I'm glad she didn't make a move because I'm not sure I'd have said no. But the thing is, _I_ didn't make a move. Max you know me, I _always_ make a move. But this time it just didn't seem, well, part of the agenda, you know?"

"You mean you were more interested in getting to know her in the non-biblical sense?"

"Yeah, smart guy, like that. And we didn't even do a lot of that kind of talk either. She woke up, middle of the night, I found her in the kitchen looking out the window at the vacant lot. She said she woke up and thought she was back in jail."

"Ouch."

"No, not like that. Just one of those where-am-I moments or something. I was up because of pizza overdose. So we just stood there, just a few minutes. We didn't say much, but…" he trailed off.

"It counted?"

Finally Mike smiled, reassured by his partner's confirmation. "Yeah, it counted. And we returned to our respective corners, and Saturday we got up, had coffee, and she went home. Said she'd call. Or I would. Something."

"You good with that?"

Logan leaned back in his chair, smiling and nodding. "Yeah, I'm good with that. I gotta say it was kind of nice waking up and not wondering what we were _supposed_ to say. It was just,"

"Natural." The smile was positively beatific.

Mike suddenly snapped out of it. "You gotta stop this, Max. If you get too good at reading my mind I'm gonna have to request another partner."

"Uh-huh." Back to work.

* * *

"So how's detective wonderful? Did you rock the night away?" Louie quizzed Merry on Monday. The bar was closed on Mondays, but they did scheduling and inventory for the week. He'd come to depend on Merry for record-keeping stuff, since she'd been working for him the longest. Six years, since she'd moved to New York from Boston where she'd lived with a great aunt and some cousins. Her parents had died when she was a teenager, just a year or two apart. When her great aunt also died, she figured it was a good time to go exploring. Just short of thirty years old, college educated, but who was gonna find a job with a degree in English Lit? She seemed steady and her references checked out, so Louie hired her as a part-time bouncer (he didn't mind hiring women as bouncers, they were good at dealing with problem patrons before things got ugly), part-time back office help. Those kinds of people never seemed to stay on, but she seemed satisfied with the job. Or at least she hadn't come up with a better idea yet. When all that shit went down with that Brian guy Louie was not a happy camper, having his business disrupted with that kind of crap. You don't need cops coming around your bar, it drives the customers away. But he was more than happy to hire her back once that mook Joey confessed about one of the stupidest things Louie had ever heard of. He knew Joey and Merry had "bonded", like they say on those idiot talk shows, but that was just messed up what he did. Joey was a good kid but not the sharpest corkscrew in the drawer, and now he'd have 15 years or so to think about it. 

"Back off, Louie, before I call the labor board." Merry was always accusing him of harassment. All he had to do is lift an eyebrow and she'd say, "Hey, hey, keep it _professional_." They both knew she was just bullshitting. Louie wasn't exactly Father Flanagan but he never put the moves on his staff and cheerfully 86'd any customer who crossed the line with them. This time, though, he wouldn't back off. Aside from the question of why she didn't have a boyfriend (not that her difficult work schedule would have made an impression) Louie was weirdly fascinated by the fact that when she finally did decide to socialize, she did it with one of the cops that busted her. Go figure.

"Blah, blah, labor board my ass. How was the concert?" He was, truth to tell, a little jealous. He was a longtime fan of Clapton himself.

Merry put down her clipboard and gave Louie the hairy eyeball. As private as she was, mostly because it never occurred to her to be otherwise, she was secretly pleased to have _someone_ to tell about it. Even Louie. It was such different territory for her, being careful about something that usually didn't rate really high on her priority list of things to be careful about.

"We didn't go. He had a bad day, so we stayed in and had pizza and watched movies."

"_Really_." Louie and Profaci swam in the same distant gene pool.

"Yeah, _really_. I fell asleep on the sofa. Which is where I stayed, all night. Except for when I woke up and wandered in to the kitchen, and he got up for a seltzer for his stomach. We just talked a few minutes. Nothing, really."

"Nothing much, you mean." Louie tipped her a wink that was not at all suggestive. "That's okay, Merry. I get the feeling this guy is different for you, huh?" He patted her arm in a paternal fashion, even though at 40 he was only a few years older. "I'm glad you had a good time. It's been awhile."

"Yeah Louie, it has been that." Back to work.

* * *

Joey Attardo's prison suicide attempt made the news for a number of reasons. One, because any prison suicide woke up the press. Another because the case had made news of its own, as in anytime a felony conviction got overturned it likewise woke up the press. It was on the news on every local station, and the TV was on in the bar that late Saturday afternoon. 

"Holy shit," Jenna the bartender gasped. "Joey hung himself. Merry," Jenna called in the back where Merry was writing up some extra orders, "you gotta see this!"

What Merry saw was the breathless coverage of the attempted suicide of "the man who gave himself up to save his girlfriend from prison", inaccurate in detail but correct in general. Found hanging in his prison cell by his cellmate who'd just returned with the other block prisoners from dinner. Attardo had begged sickness but didn't ask to go to the infirmary. He'd torn strips of sheet and managed to hang himself from the grille over the recessed light fixture. He hadn't been under psychiatric care. His cellmate said to authorities "he never talked too much. Like he still couldn't believe he was here. I figure he expected a break for turning himself in." Also inaccurate in detail, but correct in general. Apparently the transition from everyday bouncer to convicted murderer was not one he felt able to make, the newscaster pronounced sagely. Back to you, Bob.

Merry stood gaping up at the commercial now dancing across the screen. He'd called her once or twice, recently in fact. Asking again if she'd ever visit, saying he wanted to tell her face to face exactly how sorry he was for what he'd done to her. Obviously she couldn't just call him back in prison just like that as if he had his own phone in his cell, but she'd been home for one of the calls, but hadn't picked up. She'd told Jenna the next day.

"He didn't sound _suicidal_, did he?" she asked, a trifle concerned about Merry's stunned expression. "I mean it's not like he told you he was gonna, is it?"

"No, just the usual, I'd like to see you, can you at least write, like that." She focused on Jenna, "He wasn't _pleading_ with me or anything, and I really didn't know what to say that time when I was home. I was tired, I'd just gotten in, you know."

She'd just gotten in from her second date with Mike Logan, another double feature only this time Cagney did the deed at the art house up the street from her place after they'd gone out for Chinese. His treat, this time, since she'd paid for the pizza. This time she'd stayed awake. And this time they finally made it to first base, on her front stoop. She said he didn't need to walk her up, and he'd cracked, "Oh yeah, this ain't a blind date, detective. But it's been _ever_ so elegant." She was standing two steps above him.

As she looked down at him, her face a mix of "busted" and "shut up", Logan muttered, "Oh fer christsake," and pulled Merry right off the step, moving down to the sidewalk so she wouldn't topple them back. He dropped her down to his mouth dead-on target. Not that she didn't help with the aim. Her hands were gripped solid on his shoulders and despite her "working class" build he held her there for several seconds, one arm locked around her waist and one holding the side of her face.

When finally she dropped back on the first step Merry blinked twice and echoed, "Oh fer _christ_sake," and leaned forward to fall against Mike again, this time burying her hands in that thick Black Irish hair that she'd been admiring since that night in his kitchen. And oh god that mouth… sharp enough to match her wiseass for wiseass, and soft enough to make her feel like she was drowning in velvet. When his mouth opened she swallowed his kiss as if it were her last meal.

It was Mike who pulled back first. "_Damn_."

Merry actually looked, and felt, a little dazed. She hadn't jumped a guy like that in a good long time, and never one who'd made her want to take her time before doing it. "Jesus Logan, you sure don't kiss like a cop."

His eyebrows shot up. "And how exactly is that?"

"I dunno… like he's reading you your rights? That was more like… _last_ rites."

Mike took a step closer and smiled wickedly. "Never underestimate us Catholic boys."

They stood face to face for a minute, and Merry reached out to smooth the hair she'd practically pulled out of Mike's head.

"Not that I'm not interested but…" She really wasn't playing hard to get, or trying to adhere to some new inner timetable. She just, well, didn't think now was the time.

"Gotcha. No rush." He looked quickly around.

"What?"

"Just wondering if there were any witnesses to that last statement. Some people would pay big money for the broadcast rights."

"Ah." She laughed as she went up the few steps to the front door, Mike waiting until she got inside. She was starting to feel like a character in a 50's high school dating film. Not that she minded. "Just remember, anything you say can and will be used against you..."

"Hah!" he grinned and shook his head, "no news there. Later."

That was night before last. When she got upstairs that night Merry had listened to Joey's message, but not exactly. When she heard his voice she knew what he'd say, and wasn't in the mood to think of anything except how one person could make her break her usual pattern without blinking. She wasn't exactly the Whore of Babylon, but she wasn't the Virgin of Guadalupe either (staying with the Catholic metaphor). Something in between. It's not like she had rules about those things; she was driven by her own judgment. It just seemed like that had shifted lately. Oh well. She decided she'd write to Joey in the next day or two. It's not like he was going anywhere soon.

* * *

Now Merry told Jenna, "Jen I gotta go, okay? I just… gotta go home and be quiet. All right?" 

Her coworker reached out and squeezed her hand. "Yeah, sure. Louie won't care. You all right, hon?"

"I think. I just gotta be by myself and get my head around this."

She was almost out the door when Jenna called out to her. "What do I tell your friend Detective Mike?" The other staff teased him with that nickname, and he didn't seem to mind.

Mike was coming to meet her after he got off duty, no big plans. Maybe coffee. Maybe more. But it had blown right out of Merry's head in the last five minutes. No, tonight was definitely_not_ the night to risk taking the proverbial next step whether or not it was planned. And it probably wasn't planned, not exactly, even if it was probable. But still.

"Tell him I'm sorry, but I had to go. Tell him I'll call."

"Okay but if you need me you call, you hear?" Jenna and Merry had gotten friendlier since the whole Brian thing. Jenna had been a little ashamed not to have noticed the trouble he'd been giving Merry, after all they'd worked together for some years. Just because somebody didn't send you an engraved invitation didn't mean you shouldn't make the effort, her mother had told her once. Another new thing for Merry. A girlfriend and almost a confidante. Who knew they were scattered all around you ready for the asking. And a step up from Louie, to be sure.

When she got home Merry stood for a moment looking at the now unblinking "1" on her answering machine left from last night. Well at least she wasn't a big enough asshole to have erased it, she figured. She went into the kitchen to make some tea, but gave it up after she'd filled the kettle. She sat at the kitchen table with a thump, staring at her hands. She didn't know what to think, or how she should feel. She didn't know much of anything. Her mind was a tangle, a knotted up mess of bad timing, stupidity, and guilt.

"Okay, where's the suspect?" The cop lingo could wear thin sometimes, but other times he couldn't resist the black humor of referring to how (and where) he and Merry had met.

"Hey Mike. Merry left about half and hour ago," Jenna told him. Before she could say more she noticed him looking at his watch. "No, you're not late. She just got some freaky news is all. She wanted to go home and be alone with it. She said she's sorry, and that she'll call."

Mike leaned on the bar. "What news was that?" It wasn't that every part of her life was his privilege to know, but he figured it might be important. "I mean, only if you think she's gonna tell me anyway. Especially if she's worked up over it."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right. Well you remember Joey Attardo right? They were best friends and all before the murder." Duh, of _course_ he knew, she slapped herself in the forehead. "Yeah like you wouldn't remember. Anyway there was just this thing on the early news, he hung himself in his cell."

Whoa. He'd heard some side talk this afternoon about some guy with a connection to a 2-7 case, but didn't get the details. "He dead?" He knew that would matter, for sure.

"No, but they didn't say how bad he is. I guess when you try to hang yourself you're either dead or you're not, so I guess he might be okay."

Logan didn't bother telling her about brain damage from oxygen deprivation, or paralysis from a broken neck. "You're probably right. Are they sure he did it himself?"

"Yeah," she nodded, "his cellmate found him after they came back from dinner. He said he was sick and didn't want to go. Nobody else was in there with him. I mean he's not that big a deal up there, nobody would want to kill him for anything."

She may not have been right about that, but unless they came up with something else it sure sounded like a suicide attempt. Mike tapped his fist twice on the bar. "Thanks, Jenna. See ya."

Max had come clean about his conversation with Merry the night of the Concert Date That Never Was. Nodding to himself, Mike said to nobody in particular, "Maybe it's time for a little diversion, Merry Ann." He slid behind the wheel of his car and headed toward Merry's place.


	8. Diversionary tactics

When her buzzer rang, Merry knew who it was. Not because she had some magic vibe going, but because who else would buzz her on a Thursday night, especially when she'd just stood him up? She pressed the intercom button but said nothing.

"Hey."

Silence.

"At least breathe for me. Doesn't have to be heavy." Pause. "I mean that in every possible way."

"Mike, I…"

"Look, I didn't bring pizza. I _really_ didn't bring a roll of cash. The bootleg pushcart guy was fresh out of Cagney. I heard something at the precinct, and Jenna filled me in on the details. Why don't you let me in and we won't talk about it?"

She was too drained for wordplay and too messed up to say no. Besides, she craved company that felt safe and easy. It seemed from the start they'd had no secret agendas to wonder or worry about, like what does he really think, how should I act so he doesn't get the wrong idea (whatever that may be), what if he turns out to be a jerk (or thinks _I'm _a jerk) or there's some deep difference so absolute it'll rise suddenly like a brick wall. None of that neurotic stream-of-consciousness stuff. It wasn't just feeling comfortable, either. It felt like… dancing without needing lessons, and absolutely knowing that nobody's feet would get stepped on.

As he waited in the foyer Logan never doubted she'd buzz him in, and it wasn't because of the old Logan cockiness. The truth was he'd been more than a little disoriented by the sudden evaporation of old habits and urges, but every shifting piece had fallen into place as Merry swan-dived into his arms from her front stoop. The last time Mike wondered aloud what was happening in his own head Max said, "why ask why"? Goddamn Max. Fucking Irish Buddha, he was right. All the times Mike had laughed when "new age loonies" rapped on about karma and here it was hip-deep all around him and he was not inclined to question it, thanks. His hand was on the doorknob half a beat before the lock buzzed.

In different circumstances Mike would have smiled, maybe even laughed, at the Merry who opened the door and stepped back to let him in. Barely recognizable as the woman he'd been getting to know, she wore oversized green flannel pajama bottoms with ducks on them and big blue fuzzy slippers, and a well-worn Boston Red Sox sweatshirt. Her hair (colored chestnut brown since her return from prison, as if removing some former part of herself along with the red and blonde) was done up in two short fat braids. Mike would have found the change almost cute if the face framed by those braids didn't look so wounded. She backed into the middle of the small living room and stood looking at him as if to say "what now?"

"Here, I brought something for you," he pulled a square plastic case out of the pocket of his leather trench coat and handed it to her.

She took it from him but didn't look at it. "I thought you said the bootleg pushcart guy was all out of Cagney."

"But not Segovia."

Merry peered more closely at what she now saw was a CD, not a DVD, and then looked quizzically at Mike.

"Well you like Clapton, why not Segovia, right? Guitar gods are guitar gods."

In fact she loved Segovia, but she couldn't muster any real enthusiasm at the moment. "Thanks, it's over there," she pointed toward the sound system in the corner.

"I know the way."

"Oh. Right."

Mike switched on the machine and cued up the disk, setting the volume low. "Didn't think you'd mind greatest hits."

She shrugged. "That's fine. Really, Mike, that's really nice of you."

Without waiting for an invitation Logan dropped his coat on the arm of the somewhat spare sofa. All of her furniture was a little spare, kind of like the way she lived her life. Just enough, nothing overboard. The one exception was a big, wide, soft-looking armchair with a purple chenille throw flung over it. A gooseneck reading lamp arched over it from behind. Must be where she read all those books.

Feeling no need to be coy about it Mike told Merry, "So I figured you could use a little diversion." She almost smiled, but not quite.

"Your partner would make a good snitch."

"He has his moments." Merry still stood in the middle of the room, as if she had no idea where to go or what to say, so Mike kept talking. "Look, I just figured you might like somebody to share the 'it sucks' load. Am I right?"

She shrugged, painfully. "I guess. That why you're here?" Merry had known people who could smile with their eyes, but not many who could shrug with their face. Louie was one. Mike turned out to be another, doing the shoulder roll that reached upward until his whole expression shifted to emphasize his point.

He widened his eyes a little. "'I guess'," he echoed with just enough parody. "I get the feeling that you don't have anyone on the short list at times like this. Every dark room should have a night light." Like she'd been for him that night, just enough to swing the focus a little.

"I used to have one." She didn't have to explain, because it was déjà vu all over again. There was that look of bewildered sadness that looked so wrong on her, the one she wore in his kitchen that night. The one she'd worn in her own kitchen that day when he'd "returned" the pen that Max hadn't borrowed, because he couldn't keep himself from checking to see if she was at least marginally okay at the same time he knew it was against all the rules to want to know. She looked bewildered and sad and absolutely understanding that things are what they are and nothing done or undone will change them. How many faces had he seen that look on, the family and friends of victims, on his old man when he got home from work to see his wife passed out again on the living room couch and his son bruised and silent. Well things were different now, here anyway, and being sorry wasn't against the rules anymore. Some things deserved to get some sorry, even if they couldn't be fixed.

"C'mere," Mike said quietly as he took two steps and put his arms around Merry.

She wasn't crying, didn't even feel the urge really, she just felt empty and beat-up inside. She turned her head against Mike's chest and reached around his waist. He was warm and smelled of his leather coat and coffee and the ghost of his suit's recent dry-cleaning. She could feel his chin on top of her head and one hand lightly fingering a braid as it also cradled her cheek, the other hand spread on her back. His heart was as steady as his breathing and both were woven through with the low sound of guitar samba that hovered around them. Merry found a comfort in him, a buffer between her and everything that sucked that she'd been dodging (and causing) lately, something she hadn't even known enough to long for. Funny what you realize you need once you discover it's available.

God, she felt good, Mike thought to himself. He tried not to notice too much. He wasn't exactly aroused, but found her closeness very pleasant despite the circumstances. It suddenly occurred to him that the women he'd been with had mostly been lean and hard-bodied, smooth looking but with sharp corners like ultra-contemporary furniture. They could be gymnasts in bed, but not a great pleasure to cuddle with on a winter's evening even if he'd proposed it (this being a closely held desire of Logan's, and deeply hidden in deference to his reputation). Merry felt born to cuddle. His guilt-edged reverie was broken by her sudden intake of breath, so startlingly deep he thought she was going to scream or sob. Instead it was expelled in an explosive sigh that said everything she hadn't put into words. Not yet, anyway, though he suspected they were lurking just beneath the surface.

"You can talk about it if you need to, Merry Ann." He wasn't sure why he called her that; it had formed in his head before he came here. And Merry wasn't sure why the sound of it made her feel even warmer.

"Do you mind if I don't right now?" For the first time he heard hesitation.

"Nope."

Finally she looked up at him, not letting go, her eyes half shut. "Good. I'm not in the mood for talking much." She stretched up and kissed him, no mean feat considering the difference in their heights. She wanted to get lost by way of this sudden comfort she'd never known she needed, but she wanted less contemplation and quiet. She wanted heat and sweat and skin-on-skin to crowd out the thoughts she'd been fighting and shut the door on the room where Joey was still hanging in her head. Mike returned her kiss, and another, but as her hands began to travel he took her by the shoulders and pressed her a little away from him.

"Not while you're feeling like this."

"But you're _why_ I'm feeling 'like this'," she smiled and reached for him again. This time he dropped his hands and stepped back and away.

"Come on, Merry." He nodded toward the stereo. "_Segovia's_ the 'diversion', not me."

Christ, she wanted to crawl in the closet and hide. Here was the realest real guy she could remember knowing, and she was trying to use him as a sexual painkiller. What's worse is that he saw right through her. She couldn't have been more shallow and obvious if she'd whipped out a box of Trojans. Shit.

"I'm such an asshole," she muttered and went to flop on the sofa, then looked up at Mike, shamefaced. "I'm sorry. You're trying to be a friend and I'm trying to make you a gigolo."

He laughed at that and sat next to her, reaching an arm around her and pulling her closer to kiss her head. "It's the best offer I've had all week. The timing's just a little off. Understand?"

"Yeah."

"Besides, you couldn't afford me."

"Ha, ha." Merry tipped over into his lap and he caught her as she fell so she was looking up into his eyes.

"Logan do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"I told you, you can say anything."

"Do you suppose we'll _ever_ make it to the bedroom?" It was strictly a rhetorical question, and one she already knew the answer to. Mike grinned and hugged her tighter, kissed her mouth and then her neck. She smelled as good she felt, warm and kind of spicy, like that incense that always seemed to be in the air whenever he and Max worked a case in the Village.

"Oh, yeah, I'd say that's a sure thing. But hey, I don't want you thinking I'm _easy_."

Merry sat up and shot Mike a dry, sidelong look. "Uh-huh."

She sounded just like Max, the other person Mike had bonded to for life. No sense scaring her off by telling her now, though, about either thing. His immediate certainty that she knew already anyway triggered a subtle smile.

"What?"

"Nothin. Look, I'm starving. Why don't you change into something a little less comfortable and I'll take you out for Chinese."

As she got up to head to her room Merry warned, "Careful Detective Mike, I might think you're after something." She was rewarded with the sly, wicked smile she was getting very attached to.

"Yeah, and you'd be right."

As Merry laughed out loud and ran to get changed Mike reached over and picked up the CD case from the table where he'd left it.

"Diversion accomplished," he told the paunchy, bald guitarist on the cover. "Mochas gracias, Andy."


	9. The sure thing

Merry wasn't particularly restless, but her mostly-sleeping brain registered confusion at being prevented from rolling onto her side as she might do from time to time. A second, thwarted attempt woke her enough so she could wonder, albeit semiconsciously, why she was unable to move and also why that realization didn't alarm her. Then her senses caught up with her mind. Unable to see in the dark or hear any but the usual night sounds of passing cars or distant music, what she was able to perceive was... warmth. Just that. Warm hair and breath against her skin, warm beard-rough face against her neck, warm arm lying easily across her, hand and fingers tucked under her shoulder seeking her own warmth in return. Ah. She smiled, now content not to move, and went back to sleep.

* * *

"Hey." At first a whisper, then a little more urgent, "_hey_." She jiggled him a little with the hand that had been tangled in his hair, jostled his head where it lay on her shoulder. She was answered with a wordless mumble against her neck, but not much else. "C'mon, sleeping beauty, I gotta pee." 

Mike rolled back with a groan, withdrawing reluctantly from what he'd already decided was god's gift to weary detectives (this weary detective, anyway): a woman who was warm, soft, and cuddly. Particularly the latter, fulfilling a desire he'd harbored almost since puberty that until now he'd always been too self-conscious to indulge. Or maybe he'd never known a woman who'd even slightly encouraged the possibility.

"Sorry," he mumbled, offering a sleepy smile. "Hate to turn you into a bed-wetter."

The look on his face almost, but not quite, made Merry forget her full bladder. "Hold that thought," she told him and grabbed her robe as she raced to the bathroom. When she returned, much relieved, Mike was lounging with his arms crossed behind his head, looking like he'd just won the lotto.

"What?" she asked as she approached the bed.

He shrugged, still smiling "that" smile. "I toldja."

Perplexed, she sat on the edge of the bed. "Told me what?"

"Sure thing, that's what." He reached out and tugged at the sash on her robe. "It's a little late to go all modest, isn't it?"

"Oh sure, I'll be glad to freeze my ass off if it'll make you _happy_."

Before Merry could react Mike whipped back the covers and pulled her in, simultaneously managing to relieve her of her robe.

"Why do I get the feeling this is a finely honed skill?" she asked with exaggerated suspicion.

There was the facial shrug again. "Why waste years of experience? Hey," he defused her arched eyebrow and ready protest with a kiss and a more innocent smile. "At least this time it's for a noble cause."

Merry gave in to his mood and settled against him, propping herself up on his chest to stare him in the eye. She couldn't remember the last time a first-morning after was so utterly unrehearsed, if ever. "What noble cause might that be?"

The innocent smile got warmer. "Stay tuned, I'll come up with something." He ran his hands over her back, hips, and ass. "Nice chassis, lassie."

Though she rolled her eyes and muttered "Lame," Merry flinched inwardly. The something less-than-model body she was always comfortable in under most every circumstance gave her the same pause as anyone else (any woman anyway, she figured) when the clothes came off in certain company. To cover her inward doubts she joked, "Nobody's ever accused me of being a lean machine."

Mike's silly expression evaporated and he locked his arms around her waist in a bear hug. "Listen up. I only just figured out I'm tired of bumping into sharp corners. I'm ready for a little luxury. So I'm warning you, the day I get poked by bones we're through, get it?"

"Yeah. I so get it." He wasn't saying it to be nice, or even "supportive". She knew she was hardly a blimp and honestly wasn't fishing for reassurance. But years of experience observing male-female socializing at the bar had taught her that most guys, especially the young good looking ones, tended to go for the same sort of body type as themselves. Mike was tall and just trim enough that she might not qualify as "same". The wonder of it was she knew it just didn't matter to him, and betting it might be a new concept to him made her believe him all the more. She was silent for a minute or two.

"What? You don't believe me? You haven't known me long enough to be shocked that I might be enlightened or something."

Merry dropped down against him, chin resting on her folded arms. He felt so_ comfortable_, in every conceivable way. "Nah, I was just thinking considering the bones thing and all… I guess cooking fresh fish is out of the question?" She was pleased to see _his_ eyes roll as he flipped her to the side and leaned over her.

"Baby, I love your home cookin' already…hot, tender, and well done…" He punctuated each word with a kiss.

Until last night Merry never imagined "baby" could sound so good to her.

* * *

"Baby, you sure?" 

They'd gotten back from the Chinese restaurant and, Merry's mood much improved, had given Segovia another listen with Merry curled up in Mike's lap in the big cushy armchair. That had been Mike's idea. Of course, closeness led to kisses. In fact they made out like high school truants for who knows how long. God_damn_ he is a first-class kisser, Merry thought in what tiny part of her brain was still functioning logically. She'd decided long ago that kissing had become a lost art, and she'd been losing it herself given she had nobody to "practice" with. But just like riding a bike… oh yeah, it came back. And this guy, this Catholic-raised parochial Irish schoolboy cop, he was a master. Go figure.

"Logan, I could suck your face all night," she finally told him as she rested her head on his shoulder to catch her breath. He reared back and gave her a jaundiced look.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a real sweet talker?"

She made a move as if to get up. "Hey, door's right over there if you think you can do better…"

He tightened his grip. "No way. Anyway," he whispered against her ear, enjoying her shiver, "there's some other stuff we can do all night if you're still up for it."

They'd been wrestling (funny she'd never really guessed he might be a little less gentle when they got carried away, but nowhere near what could be called "rough"… maybe "enthusiastic" was a kinder word) back and forth on her disarranged bed, some clothes off and some on, when he'd asked. Raised his head from a well-kissed breast, in fact, and Merry had been so stunned by the question her hands stopped dead in their task of slipping Mike's trousers down his hips. A serious stretch, considering their respective positions, but she was making headway when the question came wailing in out of left field.

"What?"

"I said, are you sure?"

She had to choke back a laugh. He's tasting every inch of my torso, and I've got both hands down his pants, and he's asking if I'm _sure??_

Mike disengaged slightly. Oh shit, Merry thought. Talk about shattering the moment.

"What's the matter?" he asked her.

"_Nothing_, really, it's just, well, nobody's ever done this before, you know?"

He sat up abruptly and stared down at her. "Jesus H. Christ, you're a _virgin_?"

I don't fucking_ believe_ this. She ran a hand over her eyes, shook her head, not bothering to sit up. "_No_, Logan, I mean nobody ever_ asked_ me that before, that 'are you sure'." When she focused on his face in the dimness she could see he was dead serious, and that he seemed a little surprised himself that he'd asked.

"I gotta tell you," he confessed, leaning closer so he could gauge her expression, "I don't think I ever asked before. I mean don't get me wrong, I never just _assumed_, or heard 'yes' when somebody said 'no'…" He couldn't seem to shut up.

Merry reached up and grasped the collar of his almost-off shirt. "Mike, do us both a favor, will you? Just relax, and embrace your inner nice guy. I think he deserves a break, I bet he's been struggling a long time to get outta that Casanova costume." She pulled on the shirt and he shrugged his way out of it.

"Okay," he whispered, only a little sheepishly. Mike saved Merry the labor of wrestling him out of his pants and eased the rest of her clothes away, rewarding each new area revealed with different kinds of kisses, finally wrapping her up against him as they lay facing each other, hands following their own trajectory independently of their locked eyes. "But I gotta tell you, I think he'd like it better if you embraced him yourself."

"I thought he'd never ask."

What had always seemed like a familiar experience with new partners suddenly became a discovery. Each touch and movement and sound was answered with another, entirely new and unique. It was less like sex than resonance, for a while anyway. Of course by the time Merry finally moved over Mike and roughly (there was the unkind word, but much more accurate than "enthusiastic") plunged down onto him they were both senseless to everything but sensation. In a distinct contrast to their tentative progress until now, each of them tried very hard to devour the other. Mike was gripped with a kind of physical insanity; where before he'd always been in a rush to finish himself and the woman du jour in flames, now the opposite was true. Make it last, feel it longer, every inch and degree and taste and delicious burn of nerve endings. And for the first time ever Merry gave up distinguishing each individual progressing sensation in favor of grabbing for them all simultaneously, more of them, mouth and hands and him moving inside and outside of her all over and all at once, so everything about them that until now had spoken to each other now spoke together, like screaming in harmony.

Which, finally, wasn't all that far off from the truth, though neither one of them could be quite sure what, if any, actual words (dirty or otherwise) they'd spoken or screamed. Merry came first (and second), shocked voiceless; and Mike moments later repeating "baby, baby, baby," something grunted anonymously in former days but now addressed directly and with intense purpose. To Merry what sounded like an insult from others now sounded more like a love song than a hundred Spanish guitars, but only from this mouth pressed against her ear as if drawing its last breath.

All of the aforementioned ethereal impressions faded rapidly to black accompanied by desperate gaspings for breath. Mike managed to move just enough to allow Merry to continue breathing – once she was able – but not an inch more.

"Yikes," she rasped… weakly.

Mike didn't move his head from her shoulder as he spoke, each word blowing bits of her hair out of his mouth. "If you tell me I don't fuck like a cop, I'm gonna get up and leave."

She actually managed a snort. "Go ahead. I'd love to see you try to walk." She trailed fingers in his sweaty hair. "And if you ever use that f word again to describe what we just did you won't have to leave because I will kick your ass out."

He raised his head and told her, "Sorry. That was a dumbass thing to say." He kissed her to underline his sincerity and then rested his head on her shoulder again, wrapping an arm around her and settling close head to foot. "Mmm, nice," he murmured, turning his head enough to kiss the deliciously soft spot at the intersection of her shoulder and breast. "I hope you don't mind if I stay right where I am. You're nicer than any pillow."

This was a welcome change from the usual superior/protective post-lovemaking embrace she'd found herself in with any other guy she'd been with, where they held you boldly against their chest as if you were a fucking trophy they'd just won. She supposed that impression was a little uncharitable. Nonetheless, this felt very much better.

Wrapping her arms around Mike's head and shoulders Merry confessed, "That just might be one of the nicest things any guy has ever said to me, under the circumstances." He was already out like a light, but she didn't feel at all left out.

After a couple of silent minutes Merry sighed happily and kissed the top of Mike's still-damp head.

"Thank you for not snoring," she whispered, "Your cooperation is appreciated."


	10. Squawk

Over the next several months Mike's attachment to Merry settled into such routine that even Profaci tired of ragging on him. But not before he had a last good crack at his fellow detective when he arrived late for his shift after the first night spent at Merry's place.

"Whatsamatta Logan, you forget to set your alarm? Or didn't you have one last night?"

Rather than glowering, as had been his habit, Mike merely smirked and continued to his desk, where his phone rang immediately.

"Nice you could make it." Cragen.

"Uh, sorry Don, I got hung up in traffic."

"Uh-huh." _That_ came from Greevey, who'd just returned to his desk.

"See you get 'hung up' closer to the precinct next time, Mike," Cragen advised over the phone. This may well have been the first time Logan had been late in years, but Cragen didn't want anyone to think such things went unnoticed, regardless of the reason.

"Yeah, sorry, fine." After he got some coffee (he'd thrown on his clothes and left Merry's at a dead run for his car, but not until he gave Merry a quick kiss and a "call ya" that she never doubted for a second) he sat and pulled a file from his "in" basket.

"'Morning," Max's expression was almost as neutral as his almost-neutral voice.

"Yeah." He'd been working with Greevey too long not to notice the losing struggle against a knowing smile. "What?"

"Nothin. Those the LUD's from the Jackson murder?"

"Yeah." Logan handed them across to his partner, who said everything without opening his mouth. "_What?!_"

"Nothin."

Finally Mike cracked a smile. "Okay, Max, nothin. Nothin happened last night and nothin's gonna happen again. And there's nothin at all going on between me and that psycho broad. Happy now, mother?"

Greevey's eyebrows shot up in a perfect parody of Mike's favorite dumb-act. "_What?!_"

The smile widened. "Nothin."

* * *

After that first late morning Merry spent more nights at Mike's than vice versa. 

"Gimme a break," he griped when she accused him of being unfair, "you have half the day to get to work. And you _don't _have Profaci in your face every morning waiting for the nooky report." There was The Glare. "Sorry. But you know what I mean. Why make things harder?"

Okay, so he was right. She rolled her eyes in resignation. "Okay, okay. 'Things' are quite hard enough, thanks." The wicked gleam in her eye triggered a very phony expression of shock.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a filthy mind?" he accused, and then dove in for a kiss. "It's definitely part of your charm."

Mike Logan's new romantic lifestyle rapidly became everyday. Max stopped smiling like the Mona Lisa (or "you goddamn Irish Buddha"), the bullpen stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. And Profaci, a happily married man despite his taste for vicarious thrills, put the final seal of approval on the situation the day he waylaid Logan on the way to interrogation.

"Hey Mike, I know I rag on you a lot but really, I'm glad you and her are hitting it off." An understatement, and late at that, but Mike could tell it was sincere.

"Thanks. Coming from you that's nothing less than stunning." Profaci actually looked a little hurt.

"C'mon, Mikey, you know I'm a family man. I'd be lost without Theresa, I figure you deserve to be lost without somebody too."

"Interesting way of putting it. But thanks."

"So…" Profaci raised an eyebrow, "when should we book the chapel??"

The hard look returned. "When you start minding your own business." But both men parted with a smile.

* * *

"All I'm sayin is it must be a pain in the ass to haul your stuff back and forth all the time. Jesus, Merry, you'd think I put bars on the door." 

For all the time Merry spent at Mike's she never left so much as a toothbrush behind at the times she went back to her place. "I got my own place, remember? Where I can haul my stuff back and forth from if I want. Okay?"

It wasn't the first time they'd had the "discussion". After almost three months of sleepovers Mike thought maybe, just maybe, it might make sense to be together in one place at the same time every night. Save cab fare, save gas money, save rent and utilities. Save _time_, since they always seemed to have to sandwich visits between phone tag, as their hours sometimes had been in major conflict.

Mike thumped down on the sofa and threw up his hands. "I don't get it. I thought it was the _guy_ who was supposed to need his space. What's wrong with this picture, huh? I _want_ you to move in. I _want_ to be able to see you without navigating traffic or subway schedules. I want to see your bloodshot eyes and rat's nest hair _every_ morning. What part of this isn't clear to you?"

She wanted the same things, she really did. But still, the idea of somebody else having that much access to her life, 24/7, no space to retreat, no matter who it was… the things he said were easy to want but harder for her to _do_. "Maybe it's not all about just what you want, ever think of that?"

He followed her to the door and pulled the duffle bag out of her hand. "Don't bullshit me, Merry. Either you want us or you don't. My guess is yes. Hell, it isn't even a guess. I think we're past making up our minds. But of course I should ask what _you_ think, right?" As if he didn't know.

"Mikey, I just need to get used to the idea."

"_What_ idea? Simplified logistics?"

She sighed. "Total integration." He put the bag back in her hands.

"Maybe you should just come back when you find a better way to explain that."

"Maybe you're right." She kissed him and left.

* * *

That "getting used to the idea" was an artificial luxury had managed to escape Merry. Wasting time, waffling and tapdancing, all of those things that her arrest and Joey's betrayal and suicide attempt had burned off in a rush, she'd become complacent enough to allow the bad habits to creep back into her repertoire. Oh, she'd gone to see Joey after he'd recovered, and even wrote to him every few weeks. That had been put to rest. But having found such an easy interaction with Mike made it even easier to see things like logistics as unimportant. Or were they _more_ important? Mike had "integrated" some major changes since meeting her, and even though she knew they'd happened without question she couldn't manage to do the same thing. Him not sleeping around anymore – not even wanting to – was way different than her unlearning a lifetime of selective solitude, or so she'd decided. She left his place knowing he'd calm down by the time she saw him again. She knew she was probably being silly, but also knew he'd let it go as long as she needed. He was pretty patient that way. That she should be making more of an effort to change her own old habits had also escaped her. 

When she got home his message was waiting. "Merry, baby, I don't wanna fight about this. It's just not that big a deal, I guess. But you gotta know if you did move in you could have your own stuff, make your own space, all that. In fact the offer's off the table if you don't bring that chair." Beep, end message. They never spoke the Three Little Words, not once. But they could always be heard nonetheless.

She sighed and put her stuff away. She'd talk to Jenna, who was never afraid to tell her when she was being a moron. Sometimes it was easier to smarten up when she heard it from someone other than Mike or herself. Absently she switched on the squawk box, the one Mike had forbidden her to bring to his place.

"I'm just taking an interest in your job, for godsake."

"Well I take an interest in your job too, but I don't subscribe to the Barfly network. I'll leave the radio in my car, thanks. Besides, you listen to that stuff enough it'll make you crazy. Er."

Actually she'd found some of the stuff fascinating, most of it everyday kinds of things, check out this and follow up that. Today, though, something more was happening. Shots fired, officer down, in Queens. Calls for backup in Brooklyn, _two_ officers down, and more shots fired. The latter exchange between the dispatch and officers in the field was punctuated by pops and cries of "Rogers! _Rogers!" _ and the near-hysterical pleas for backup, that Rogers was down and exposed and nobody could get to him. She shut it off when the cop on the radio started calling to what had to be his partner, telling him to hang on, backup's coming.

All the times she'd turned the thing on since she'd gotten it, dispatch and static, dispatch and static, it was like a TV show or something. This time the reality made it hard to breathe. Mike did that stuff, not on a beat, but him and Max, they chased armed people down alleys, walked into maybe-ambushes. Not so maybe. She'd never even asked if Mike had ever had a close call. She knew he'd never been hit, not a scar on his body and she knew every inch of it. He was a cop, he'd investigated Brian's murder and tossed her place and busted her. She'd known the cop lingo before she met him, but never considered the reality of it even on the bus ride upstate. Now she was wondering if Rogers had a girlfriend or wife or kid somewhere and who would be finding them to tell them if he was dead or alive. He was just doing his job. But his... _Mike's_... job came with loaded guns and crazies and other people who didn't care who else lived or died. Homicide detective. Homicide, detective. Jesus Christ. Someone had said it once to her; any chance could be your last. Was it Aunt Rita? All she knew was that suddenly she was paying attention.

* * *

At first Profaci didn't recognize the brunette who came flying out of the stairwell. When she stopped on a dime to get her bearings he got a better look at her face. Mike's girl, must have dyed her hair since he saw her that night she came to meet Mike for the concert they never made it to. She was out of breath, like she'd run all the way from home. 

"What," he started to ask but she took off again, headed for Greevey's desk.

"Where is he, Max?" she gasped, "_Where?_"

She looked like she was either on a mission, or worse. Max got up and tried to reach for her arm, "Merry, what's up? Are you all right? Sit down, honey, Mike's just,"

She shook him off and cut in, "Where is he, goddammit!"

"In the can, excuse me for living," Mike called from the other side of the office. "What the hell," he began, but she'd already rushed him, backed him against the wall, grabbed his jacket lapels and got in his face. This wasn't just a flaky mood. Her eyes were desperate.

"Do you love me?" Merry demanded as if her life depended on the answer.

"_What_?" He glanced around the bullpen for half a second, then realized something very serious was happening.

"Answer the question!" Merry was hanging onto his tie with one hand, her other wrist held tight in his hand.

"Yeah, I love you! What's the _matter_?"

She let him go, but then insisted, "Gimme your keys."

Mike struggled to grasp what was going on. Max had paused a few steps from his desk. Nobody was saying a word.

"You need my car?"

"_NO!" _she nearly shouted. "Your keys, your housekeys, okay?" Suddenly she shut up, looked around as if waking from a dream, then said in a quieter voice, "You know, what we were talking about earlier. My stuff, your place. I gave my landlord notice. Gimme your keys, Louie said I could use the van to move some of my stuff. I have a month to figure it all out."

Mike took advantage of her momentary silence to grab her other hand and pull her down the hall to an empty interrogation room. Once inside he let her go. She stepped back, suddenly out of words.

"Jesus, Merry, you wanna tell me what's happening?? You come screaming in here, acting crazy…" Now he could see she was trembling. He lowered his voice, took her by the shoulders. "Merry Ann, _talk_ to me. What happened?"

"Queens happened. _Brooklyn_ happened, Rogers…" she trailed off, staring hard in his eyes as if that was all it would take to make everything clear to him. He squeezed gently, pulled her closer, waiting. "I was wrong," she told him, "I'm so totally wrong, about all of it. I wanna see you every morning too, I don't give a shit about my space or distance or keeping me to myself. I want _you_, I do, even if I didn't seem like it this morning." She took a deep, shaky breath. "Don't ask me why I'm so stupid, but I just figured out today that saying 'see ya later' isn't a sure thing. I might be home late, but you might not be home _at all_, and why am I wasting the chance to have every minute I can?"

Mike was starting to make some sense of this, but only a little. "It's okay, if it takes you a little time to get into it."

She shook her head, grabbed his jacket again, "That's just it, I just figured out I don't _have_ 'a little time', all I have is _now_. Mikey, I heard it today, in Brooklyn, two cops pinned down and one got shot and suddenly all that static and dispatch and shit was _real people_ just like you. And Rogers might live or die, " Mike finally figured out that Rogers must be one of the cops that got pinned down and/or shot, "and somebody was gonna have to tell the people he loves." For the first time ever Mike saw Merry's eyes widen and run with tears. "I _love_ you Michael Logan, and if somebody is gonna have to tell me that you went down in the same kind of thing I want them to tell me right to my face, " here she pointed between her own eyes before clamping onto him again, "and to do that they gotta know where to find me. Your address, your phone number, they can find me there." Her knuckles were white; she was shaking all over. "Do you _get_ it? If you love me I need your _keys._" She wasn't even aware she was crying.

"Okay, Merry, it's okay, I get it," he unclenched her hands from his clothes and hugged her, telling her quietly, "I love you, okay, I love you, you take my keys and next time I come home you'll be there because it'll be your home, too. Okay? Don't cry, baby, it's okay." He lifted her face from his chest and smoothed back her hair, wiping some tears away, kissed her a couple of times. "Calm down, okay?" She was still shaking and gasping so he held her tight again and murmured, "Babe, I told you that squawk box was a bad idea."

A couple more minutes passed and finally Mike could feel Merry's breathing returning to normal, her grip on him less panicked. "Okay now?" This time she looked up at him, eyes red and a little confused, as if she wasn't quite sure what she'd been up to for the past twenty minutes.

"Yeah. I'm sorry I put on such a show."

Mike smiled and kissed her again. "That's okay. Now I said I love you in front of a roomful of cops, I gotta live up to it. You're pretty slick." She was looking upset again, so he hastened to add, "Kidding, I'm kidding. Come on, catch your breath and settle down, okay? Here," he fished in his pants pocket and undid a couple of keys. "Here's the front door, and here's my door. I'll get another set made for you, but keep these for now. If you're gonna be away late, moving stuff or something, just call. I'll get a spare from the super." She took the keys from him and nodded.

"Y'know," he said softly, "most cops never even have to pull their piece in their whole career. You just hit a bad day."

"Uh-huh." The Max voice.

"Okay, you go do what you gotta get done today, and I'll see you tonight." He tipped her face up to his. "Welcome home, Merry. Don't forget the chair. Do forget the squawk box."

"Okay."

When he got back to his desk, Mike rubbed both hands over his face and stared at his partner. "She heard a shootout on that foolish squawk of hers. Guess it got the wheels turning."

"Ya think? Well congratulations anyway."

"What? She's moving in, we're not getting married."

"Who you kidding?" Profaci cracked and turned to Max. "Ten bucks says they do the deed before New Year's." It was just shy of Labor Day.

The Irish Buddha sat back and beamed. "Sucker bet."


	11. Family history

Ring… ring…

On the third ring Mike stuck his half-shaven face out the bathroom door and called to the living room, "Hey, your highness, can you get that?" Three weeks and she still had a hard time getting her head around the idea that this was her home (and phone) too. Being no fool, not recently anyway, Mike figured the smartest route was wise ass. Heartfelt talks weren't their strong suit.

Merry jumped up from where she lounged reading on the sofa. "Sorry!"

"Don't be sorry, don't forget this is where you live too!" Okay, wise ass only went so far with the New Mike Logan.

Merry grabbed the phone before the answering machine could kick in. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end was female, older, and a little stiff though something bright sparked underneath, "Maggie?"

"Uh, sorry, I think you might have the wrong number. This is the Logan residence? I mean, Logan and Ryan. Who are you looking for?" Shit, real smooth. She was trying to act as much at home as Mikey insisted she should feel, but it was coming slowly.

"Logan… and Ryan?" The chill in the strange voice increased. "Is Michael at home?"

Whoa. Michael? "Yes he is, just a moment…" then Merry thought it sounded so formal she should ask, "can I tell him who's calling?" The moment of silence was so long Merry thought the caller had hung up. "Hello?"

"You may tell him Patricia Logan is calling."

"Sure, just a minute," she pressed the mute button and called out, "Mikey? Some woman for you… I thought it was a sales call but she says Patricia Logan?"

"Ah, _shit_!" Mike wiped the residue of shaving cream from his face and trudged out to the living room like it was the last walk to the gurney at Ossining. He took the phone from Merry with a fatalistic smile.

"Yeah, hi Ma. Or should I say 'Patricia'?"

Merry heard only half of the conversation that followed.

"_I didn't feel the need to identify myself to a stranger."_

"Where I work your name works as i.d." He sighed. "Okay, what's up? I know, I haven't called lately. It's been pretty busy."

_"I imagine so. You seem to have gotten a roommate. I'd think the city might manage to pay you enough to get by on your own."_

Mike held the phone away from his ear for a minute, to gather his thoughts. Of course he knew sooner or later his mother would call, or he'd have to call her, it was just a fact of life like John Doe vics and ingrown toenails. Well at least she sounded sober, that was a plus. He looked at Merry, who was managing to mask her puzzled expression behind the book she'd been reading. He sat down next to her on the sofa.

"Okay, okay. You can lay off the sarcasm, I should have told you. Merry moved in with me a few weeks ago."

"_Merry? Not Maggie."_

Merry jumped as Mike barked into the phone, "_Enough_, Ma! Maggie and I were over a _long_ time ago. You seem to be the only one who hasn't moved on." Silence on the other end. "You there?"

"_Of course I'm here. I'm waiting for you to be civil. Who is this… 'Merry'?_"

"We met last year." He knew the question would come, so he headed it off, sort of. "From work. I met her at work."

"_She works for the NYPD too?_" As usual she said "NYPD" the way other people would say "sanitation department." Déclassé, at least as far as his exalted mother was concerned, though god knew where she came by the bloodline to cling to that attitude.

"No, I was working on a case. I met her when I was working on a case. She assistant manages at a club."

"_You mean she works in a bar._"

"I mean she's the _assistant manager_, not the spittoon polisher. Merry Ryan's her name." Now he smiled in Merry's direction as she lowered the book, no longer pretending not to be listening. "She's smart. She's a wiseass, like me. And she moved in with me because I asked her to. That's all you need to know, until _you_ can be civil." Like any of us will live that long, he thought to himself.

"_I hope it's not too much to ask that I meet this young lady? After all, she's the first you've asked to move in."_

Of so many. Mike could hear the words screaming in his ear though they hadn't been spoken aloud. "Well we're both pretty busy, but I'll mention it to her."

_"Merry?"_

"Yeah, Ma, like in Christmas. It's a nickname, for Meredith." As always Mike found himself answering his mother's questions when he'd really rather respond with "Fuck off". For the life of him he'd never understand why he didn't.

_"Ryan. Catholic?"_

Well he knew _that_ was coming. "It never came up. You can ask her when you meet her, if it's so important to you." Christ, this was not going to work out well.

_"Then you'll come by for a visit? It's been a long time, Michael. I'm not getting any younger."_

"Me neither, since you brought it up. Okay, when's a good day? We both have Sundays off, but don't read too much into that."

_"Next Sunday, then? I'll make dinner. Three o'clock?"_

Mike sighed. When it was time to get down to details, she always played reasonable. "Okay. Three o'clock, next Sunday."

_"You'll call if you'll be late?"_

"If it kills me. That's one thing you and Merry have in common, Ma, an obsession with being punctual."

"_Now that is good news. I'll see you then, goodbye Michael."_

"Bye, Ma." He switched off the phone and fell back on the sofa. Merry set down her book and eyed him closely.

"So I guess the rumor is false, you weren't raised by wolves?"

"Ha, ha. I never claimed I was an orphan."

"It never came up, to be honest. You always knew more about me than I knew about you. Perks of your job, I don't hold it against you. So… mind if I ask why 'Ma' thought I should be Maggie?" Merry offered the last for pure amusement's sake. As she didn't expect Mike was an orphan, she also never imagined he was a virgin. Being the "first" was a fairytale she'd never longed for; she'd never wanted to be anybody's experiment in First Love.

Mike replaced the cordless phone in its stand and returned to sit by Merry. "Maggie and I were in academy together, had our early assignment in the 27th together. We _were _together, for a while. It ended, 'amicably' as they say, we just didn't make a good match I guess. She wanted married and I wanted, well, less than married. It was a long time ago, five-six years or so. Like you heard me say, Ma was the only one hasn't moved on. She wanted married, too, and she wanted me married to Maggie. She was always into the idea that I'd end up with a nice Irish Catholic girl."

Merry laughed. "Well you got two outta three. I'm Irish, at least, and I try to be nice."

Mike leaned closer and gave her a kiss. "You're better than nice." He sat back for a minute. He knew that it was inevitable, that his mother would sooner or later know about this cosmic shift in his life. That she'd want to, have to, meet Merry. At the same time he knew it wasn't fair to bring Merry into the Twilight Zone of his family without some forewarning, some information. "Look, you might not think it's any big deal to meet my family, such as it is. But I know different. So it's fair I tell you some things."

Merry sat, waiting for some typical stories of youthful angst and adolescent hostilities. The usual. "Go ahead, I can take it. We've all had mothers, how bad can it be?"

He shook his head, looked away for a minute. "How bad you got?"

And he told her, because for the first time in his life he believed, no he _knew_, that the telling wouldn't call judgment down on him. He told her about the fighting, the shame his mother felt that she'd married "beneath her". He told her about the career drinking, Dad hitting Ma and Ma hitting him, how it became more than a habit and less than predictable, until his childhood was a minefield and he was desperate for refuge, for someone he could trust who wouldn't regard him as a burden or a target. Then he told her about Father Krolinsky. He'd never told any woman he ever knew, and few men, about that. The man he was before, he was sure they'd think he was a closet case, damaged goods, or a drag instead of the good time he tried so hard to be to make up for everything the bad times had nearly made him.

When he'd finished and finally looked her straight in the eye he saw she was crying.

He pulled her into his arms. "Oh, no baby, don't cry for me, I'm okay, I turned out okay, I wouldn't have wanted you here if I wasn't."

Merry sniffled back her tears and pulled up to look him as straight in the eye as he'd done with her. "I know, I know that. It's not for you, not who you are now, because if you weren't okay I wouldn't be here." She looked deep into him, seeing the concern he had for her, not a trace of self-pity, and broke down again. "I'm crying for Mikey, twelve years old with nowhere to hide and nobody to trust who was worthy of it. _Somebody_ should cry for him, even if he had to wait this long." She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight as he kissed her hair and rocked them both.

"Okay, Merry, it's okay. Everything's okay now. When we go see Ma next week we'll both prove it to her."


	12. After dinner mensch

What filled the car on the drive home sat between Mike and Merry like a fat man on the subway. A silent presence, weighty and impossible to ignore.

By this point in their relationship Mike was well aware that Merry could keep her mouth shut with the same relentlessness she displayed when running it. Bowing to the inevitable, he spoke first.

"Well, I warned you."

Nothing.

"What? Did I tell you something that made you expect Mother Cabrini?"

No response, at first, except a tight snort of breath as she continued to stare out the passenger side window as if the secrets of life were being spelled out in billboards and graffiti. But the fat man was gone with the wind when Merry finally replied.

"She thinks I'm a whore, for christsake. She as much as said so." Just after they got in the door, in fact.

_I'm sure you must meet all sorts of interesting men working in a bar. _(Merry's translation: "so how many tricks did you turn a night?")

Not yet getting that he was used to this crap while Merry was a newcomer to the nightmare, Mike rolled his eyes.

"She thinks _every_ woman that I ever went out with was a whore! That includes a lawyer and two loan officers. You're in great company."

"Oh, yeah, and she thinks I fucked my way out of a murder conviction. Nice."

_How fortunate for you that your… 'friend' came forward._ (Merry's translation: I'm sure you made it worth his while)

Feeling a little put upon – hell, he'd warned her! – Mike suggested, "Well you're the one that told her every gory detail of how we met. "

Right. Merry shot upright and turned to face Mike. "Excuse me, but I thought she knew. She knew about the bar, she knew we met while you were on the job, what was I supposed to think?"

"I told her _where_ we met, and when, not how. And I told you what a tightass, superior bitch she is, what did you expect? A dozen roses and two tickets to Oprah?"

"Why shouldn't I tell her? Why shouldn't I have thought you did? I'm not ashamed of any of it, why couldn't you tell her you aren't either? But no, all through the whole thing, while I was choking on every mouthful and she was smiling that Cruella DeVille smile and delivering those barely-veiled one-liners, all you did was toss out the occasional smartass comment. 'Yeah Ma, that bar is a regular smorgasbord of eligible bachelors', and 'Sure, she's still paying off the Alibi Loan at the bank'. Would it have killed you to just once say 'what's it to you?' She can't beat you up anymore, what were you afraid of?"

Abruptly Mike pulled into one of the endless urban fast-food parking lots that lay between his place and his onetime home, and threw the car into park. When he looked at Merry he could see the wounded eyes behind her outrage. He reached out and kept her from turning her face away.

"You listen to me, Merry Ann," he told her, his voice quiet now, "I'm not ashamed of anything, and I'm not afraid of anything. And no, Ma can't beat me up anymore, not like she used to anyway. But I know her, I know her inside and out because I never had a choice. And I know what you're thinking and I know why it pissed you off I didn't say anything or fight with her, and I was wrong to think you'd understand why. I'm sorry for that." Merry didn't answer. "Baby," he tilted his head to touch his forehead to her temple, "all you can do with my mother is fly under the radar. I got pretty good at it after I moved out. But sooner or later she gets the fix on me, and I can't avoid her anymore. So we do the dance like you saw today, and I let her take her shots, and get up and walk out when I've had enough. Only this time she did it with you, and I'm sorry, but even if I said everything you thought I should, it wouldn't have mattered. It just wasn't worth it."

She couldn't believe her ears. "How can you say that? I sat there and took it, things I've never had to put up with from anyone, and it 'wasn't worth it' to do _anything_?"

He shook his head. "Not like that. You think when she was saying that shit to you, about you, in her code that any moron can break, you think I didn't want to give it right back to her? That I didn't I want to stand up and pop her one? I didn't, and it's because I've spent my whole life trying to be smarter than that, and smarter than my dad who _did_ pop her every time he'd had enough instead of getting up and walking out. Maybe that's why I keep going back, because every time we do the dance and I get up and walk out instead of breaking up the place and beating the crap out of her, I feel like I'm a little bit smarter than both of them."

It was a lot to absorb. The matter-of-factness of what he'd just told her, this twisted relationship he accepted as the norm, she couldn't understand why he didn't just walk out for good. Then again, there was a lot she'd never understand, because she hadn't been there, had she? She sighed, and turned her face against Mike's for a moment.

"This can't be the first time it's happened. Bringing someone to meet your mother, I mean."

Now Mike sat back and smiled as if he'd just realized something. "No. I mean yeah, it's happened before. But it's the first time I ever bothered to explain."

"What are you _smiling_ at?" She was beginning to decide they were both too crazy to survive outside of a locked unit.

"I guess I'm just getting smarter and smarter," he laughed, then leaned forward and gave Merry a hearty smooch. "C'mon, let's go to that den of iniquity where you meet so many interesting men and let _this_ one buy you a beer. Hey, I might even buy you a dozen roses."

Merry could laugh now, too. Normal was _so_ relative. "What, no tickets to Oprah?"

"Oprah… Christ, I'd rather go another round with Ma."

* * *

"Hey Greevey, pool's up to a hundred-fifty bucks, and Christmas is just around the corner. You in?"

What had begun as a sucker bet had turned into a proper betting pool, with the winner being whoever's chosen date was closest to when Mike actually popped the question to Merry. A fairly lucrative side pool had developed among the female administrative staff, devoted to whether it would be Mike or Merry who actually did the "popping".

"I told you, Profaci, I don't bet on my partner's love life."

"Not anymore, you mean."

"Hey, what pool? How do I get in?" Mike just was returning from a witness interview and tossed his notebook on his desk. "C'mon guys, Christmas is coming and I got something special in mind that could use a little extra cash."

"Make it a 50/50, and I'm in," Max told Profaci, who understood that 50% would be going to Logan to help pay for that "something special".

"Done. We'll talk details later." A shrug in Logan's direction. "Just a fundraiser at the ITAM club, we're working the Micks this year too."

Fundraiser? He could swear he heard the word "pool". Mike reached for his wallet and pulled out a five. "Here, I'm always up for keeping you WOPs in pizza money."

Profaci and Greevey exchanged a look and busted out laughing.

"What?" Mike demanded.

"Nuthin," Max told him. "Now what have you got on that construction site vic. I gotta get outta here early and get some Christmas shopping done with the family."

"Got wiseguys written all over it, take a look," Mike handed over the notebook, the betting pool question forgotten. This case could link into something big, and Max had some background on it. Max loved nailing wiseguys.

Good life, good work, _everything_ was looking good.


	13. The best man

So many flowers, so many faces. It was kind of a blur.

Merry stood, waiting. Holding her breath, straining her eyes ahead and trying hard to get Mike to look at her. The organ music was traditional, it was all so much more traditional than she could ever think of planning herself. She'd never have been able to. That was for the experts. She didn't know any experts at this, herself, but there were others who did, thank god.

She wasn't used to playing dress-up, as she thought of it. Neither was Mikey, but they both did it without complaint. For the occasion. It would only be for a few hours, after all. She couldn't believe she was standing in church, waiting, thinking of things she'd never believed herself capable of thinking. Because she never believed she'd be here, doing something like this. Love, she'd discovered, could make you do things you never believed you were capable of, and then it made you too scared to think too much about them.

She fingered the ring on her left hand, soon to be joined by another. She wasn't crazy about diamonds, so Mikey had saved what he could and financed what he couldn't and took the 50% of the proceeds of two betting pools, and went into hock for an emerald ring instead. A beautifully simple white gold solitaire with a Celtic knot motif. The small oval emerald was flanked by two smaller diamonds (so sue me, he'd said when she gasped after opening the box). She reminded herself to get even with Profaci for turning her engagement into a floating crap game, when the time was right, if it ever was.

Mike still wouldn't look at her. Maybe he couldn't see her from where he stood with Profaci, Captain Cragen, some others she didn't know so well. All dressed alike, uncomfortable, and clinging to the razor's edge at the brink of emotions they weren't comfortable giving in to, even knowing each other for so long. Not now, in front of everyone.

The priest took his place in the sanctuary, or whatever they called it. Mike had tried to explain a few Catholic basics to her, so she'd know what was expected when, kneeling and praying and such. That he was trying to translate such a foreign (to her) ritual said a lot, given that this was a first for him as well.

The familiar tune, the one even Merry could recognize (who couldn't?) began, the organist keeping the rhythm stately so the slow march up the aisle could follow its beat and not demand too much of the participants. There was a lot to manage, a lot that drew the mind away from something as mundane as putting one foot neatly in front of the other.

She wanted Mike to _look_ at her, she wanted to be locked into those blue eyes so everything else would disappear, so she wouldn't have to notice the captain, or Profaci, or Marie who sat up front. She turned with the strangers around her to follow as the honor guard bore the casket up the aisle to rest it on the bier. They set it down, stepped back, turned neatly as one, and took their places.

Finally he looked for her, at her, but by then her vision was awash. The first time she'd been to church in thirty years or more; it was supposed to be a little bit later, it was supposed to be _different_.

The priest was supposed to be speaking his foreign ritual over her and Mikey, not Max Greevey. Max was supposed to be standing up front with Mikey, then sitting down next to Marie, watching them as the priest said his magic words. Max was supposed to be watching _them_.

She pressed her left hand to her face, feeling the ring that was half paid for by the man who should be standing up with Mikey in three weeks, but wouldn't be. She shut out the priest, the people, the uniforms.

Especially the uniforms.

It was all kind of a blur; somehow it felt safer that way. Merry wondered if Mike would understand that, if she told him. She knew that Marie Greevey would.

* * *

A/N: the "familiar tune" mentioned is Ave Maria, traditionally played or sung at many Catholic funerals

* * *


	14. Fine

"Look, why don't you sit here for just a minute and let me call the precinct, see if Mike can pick you up. No sense taking the subway, right?"

No response other than maybe the hint of a nod.

Ben Stone closed his office door softly behind him and reached for the nearest desk phone, ignoring the few clerks and secretary who'd been following the scene behind the un-drawn blinds.

"Cragen."

"It's Ben. Look, is Mike Logan around? I have his fiancée in my office. I think it would be a good idea if he came over."

"Sure, he and Profaci, a few others, we're just finishing up, sealing the files on the Magadan case to send to records." Cragen looked out his office window to see the low-level bullpen activity that passed for "finishing up."

Everyone knew what that meant. Since the conviction Stone knew they'd be cleaning up Max Greevey's pending case notes, making sure everything was set for Ceretta to take over the day-to-day. And just getting used to the idea. The guilty verdict had put the type of button on the episode that was the only kind of "closure" that made sense to a cop, even if it would take a long, long time for the painful emotional dust to settle. Fine, though, everyone was fine. Everyone had done their time with Elizabeth Olivet who needed to. Even Logan's red haze had burnt away after the sentencing. Time was distance, though it would probably never be enough.

"Merry Ryan's at your office? Everything okay? This isn't IAD stuff, is it?"

Stone could hear the puzzlement in the captain's voice. "No, nothing like that," he explained, "She actually came by to thank us for the conviction." As he cast a glance toward his office Stone noticed Merry had moved to the floor next to the couch, sitting with knees drawn up, looking as if she'd made a grave mistake and was waiting for the principal to arrive. "Don, do you know if Ms. Ryan got a chance to talk to anyone after Max's death? Spousal support, Liz, somebody? Marie, maybe? You know, to take care of her own issues with this."

"Mike said she didn't want any of it. Why, you think she's having a problem? Sounds pretty normal, thanking the guys who put Max's killer away, considering who Max was to Mike. And to her too. In fact Logan says she's been a rock for him, right there every step of the way in his issues with the confession, you saw her at the trial. Anyway, Mike says she told him she didn't want any part of counseling, said she's fine."

"Right. Just like _he _was." Like we all were, Ben thought to himself.

* * *

Merry had shown up at the A.D.A.'s office not quite half an hour before, saying she was there to thank him and Paul both for putting away the asshole that killed Max. They were more than even, now, she told him, for everything that had happened when she'd first shown up on the 2-7 radar a couple years back. All that seemed reasonable, and Ben had thanked her for coming, we all feel the same way about this he told her, none of us would have rested until Magadan was put away, at least that's something. She'd gotten a little more intense, then.

"_Mr. Stone I need you to understand, it was much more important than you think, it really was. See, I've been trying so hard for Mike, you know? He lost his partner, and I don't know much about cops yet but I think I know a little about what that meant. See, they're more than coworkers or friends, they watch out for each other, not just with guns and all… did I tell you I wouldn't be here except for Max?"_

_At that point Ben had invited her into his office, closed the door. Something was working its way out in her words. _

"_How's that?" he asked._

"_I would've walked, that first night remember when I saw you on the stairs and said we were going to a concert? He wasn't there, just left the tickets with Max, and I said oh swell I'm outta here, no sense starting what won't go anywhere. But Max, he told me why, and about cops and about how Mike is, and making a diversion." She didn't explain further. "So I did, but I wouldn't have, and he always knew we were meant to be here, you know? So I've been trying really hard to help Mike, because I know about cops now, and know he needed to do this his way, and so I was just there and listened and watched for what I could do."_

"_But what about you?" Stone ventured, he couldn't help himself. To make it sound less invasive, he added, "You look tired." She looked like hell, actually._

"_Me? Oh I'm fine. I know Mike said I could talk to that group or that Dr. Olivet who he said was helping him in spite of himself, but I needed him to know I was okay so he could just get back on track. For Max, see? Because Max, he won the pool, and he gave it all to us, to Mike, for this," she held up her left hand, and Stone watched her unravel, face crumpling gently and voice dissolving in tears, "and he told me it's important to know when not to talk about it, so I didn't make Mike talk, and I didn't let him make me. I guess we've been keeping weird hours, with the trial and all, sometimes I wake up at night, the dreams aren't so bad I guess, I mean they're just dreams, right?" She was staring at her ring, oblivious for a moment, and then looked up again. "I mean, dreams can't come true, can they? Shit happens, it doesn't mean it's gonna happen to us." Suddenly she seemed horrified. "Oh god, don't tell Marie I said that, please!"_

_My god, how much of this has she been holding back, Ben wondered. Survivor guilt combined with the kind of fears she'd probably never considered before… he figured up til now Merry Ryan's biggest fear was that whomever she was dating might lose his job, or lose interest. Stone had been on the job and around the force long enough to know the kinds of demons that jump up the first time anyone really understands what their "significant others" do when they leave the house with a badge, and see how random the odds are that they might or might not return on any given day. And it was no secret she'd gotten attached to Greevey for reasons independent of his partnership with Mike Logan. Max had that effect on people, and they'd all been helping one another limp through his loss. Somehow Merry Ryan had gotten lost in the shuffle, and it was apparent that she thought that's the way it was supposed to be._

_"Look, why don't you sit here for just a minute…"_

* * *

"Lemme get Logan." Cragen leaned out the office door. "Mike, phone."

Mike tore himself away from the latest round of laugh-your-ass-off Greevey stories and called to the captain, "Be right there." He really had been feeling more himself; the rapid disposition of Magadan's case, together with his waking up and shaking off his own stupidity and finding the purpose of his meetings with Olivet, all of this was allowing him to stagger toward life again. Ceretta wasn't so bad. And Merry, well she'd been broken up about Max for sure, but everyone had been impressed with how she'd gotten through it. Mike felt kind of guilty, actually, knowing how everything and everybody was rallying around him as the bereft partner, and he'd been so wrapped up in the case, and his own bad moves of course. It was like a bad dream, and she was always there but quietly watching, as if she'd somehow be able to grab him and pull him back from the edge if he got too close to it. By the time he "woke up", everything seemed almost normal at home. She must have gotten herself through it, more shame on him, because he hadn't noticed any struggle.

He jogged to the captain's office and Cragen explained, "Ben Stone, says Merry's at his office."

With a "huh?" expression Mike took the phone. "Counselor, what's that woman been up to _now_?"

"I think you need to see what's going on with her," Stone's tone expressed his obvious concern, "Don said you told him she's fine." He didn't really intend to sound accusing, but Logan lived with this woman for god's sake, how could he not see how she was being affected?

Mike was surprised and more than a little confused. In the back of his mind, though, something pricked his conscience. Ignoring his inner grownup for the moment, he explained a bit defensively, "Well yeah, I tried to get her to see Olivet or even that support group, I mean we're engaged so they told me they'd work her in. I tried, but she wouldn't go for it."

"I suggest you try harder. "

"Exactly what the hell is going on there?" Mike demanded, his inner grownup taking over.

"I don't know enough about it to explain, just come to my office as soon as you can. And I suggest you call Liz Olivet."

Jesus. "I got a better idea, you call her while I'm on my way." He dropped the phone back in its cradle and turned to Cragen. "I gotta go."

"Go ahead, and call in tomorrow if you need to. You have time coming, _take_ it this time."

* * *

"I don't get it, why here?" Logan asked, winded by his race up the stairs to Stone's office when the elevator didn't arrive quickly enough.

"I don't know," Stone confessed, "she came here for a real reason, and we do have a past connection however unpleasant. Maybe her guard fell; maybe it's neutral territory, a familiar face but no uniforms. I have no idea. I called Liz, she said you should call her. Mike, Merry's as stubborn as you are," Ben nodded toward his office. "The NYPD had the power to order you to take care of yourself or you wouldn't have done it. If it were someone I loved, I wouldn't take no for an answer."

Logan nodded grimly and patted his back pocket. "She's stubborn, but I've got the cuffs." He was only half kidding.

He found Merry sitting on the floor next to the sofa, looking pretty much as Stone had described. God damn, how could he have been so blind? She'd said "I'm fine," over and over, and I believed it, Mike berated himself. Sure, it was easier to do that than get distracted from his Mission From God. Merry had told him the same bald-faced lie that he Cragen and Profaci and everyone else were telling each other. The difference was that when Merry told it, he believed her. What an asshole.

Mike closed the door behind him and went to kneel in front of her. Christ, she looked wrung out. He'd missed that too, hadn't he? Not that it was hard to notice her waiting up for him the night he got Magadan, or the nights he went to the bar to pound down a few (not too many) then came home to sit up for the rest of the night counting the ways he should have killed the "defendant". In fact the only time, he realized, that Merry had actually shared what was churning inside was that first night when he'd come home at 4 a.m. after the arrest. He hadn't been home since the night before, had told her he was working things with Ceretta. But when he'd come home afterward and told her what happened with Magadan, she'd asked him why.

"_Why did I play rough with him? Because he killed Max, for christsake!"_

"_No. Why didn't you kill him when you could?"_

That had been the first and last flash of reality she'd given up, and Mike had dismissed it as sarcasm and gone to take a shower. What he saw in her now made him realize how wrong he'd been.

"Hey."

"Hey." Small voice, shamefaced expression.

"You got the good counselor worried, and he got the captain worried, and now all of you got _me_ worried."

"I'm sorry, I just came to thank him." She looked past Mike to the outer office. "I don't know what happened."

"Scrooch over there a little," and when she did Mike sat next to her, companionably, the way they'd done that first night she'd come to his place, when they Weren't Talking About It. Fuck Not Talking About It, especially now. Stone was right, Mike thought ruefully. Try harder. But he knew he had to start carefully, she was so much like he was that pushing too hard would just slam her doors even tighter.

"Y'know, I don't know what I would've done without you through all of this. I mean I was bouncing off the walls, crazy, not caring about anything but getting this guy, and there you were, always, just there waiting with a cup of coffee and no complaint. You never said a word about how _you_ felt about everything."

"Well I knew what was happening, I mean I could _see_, and I knew you needed to get through it the best way you could. I knew you'd figure it out, that you'd go to that company shrink and you'd figure it out. And you did."

He leaned closer, looked into her face. "That's right. Now it's your turn." He didn't tell her he was sorry for being such a blind asshole, or that she was wrong to keep it to herself. All he had to say was what counted, like Max said. She was crazy about Max, that much was obvious from the start. Sometimes Mike thought if they'd never gotten started, or if they broke up, she'd have found a way to keep in touch with Max anyway.

"I'm fine."

Now he took her hands, and squeezed. "Yeah, right, me too. Babe, you know how much Max liked you? No, not liked, loved. He loved that you turned me from a land shark to a human being. He used to tell me 'Logan, if you screw this up I'm gonna ask for another partner because I can't trust my back to anybody that stupid'. If I ever treated you wrong he'd have kicked my ass. He wouldn't want you like this, all on your own when you don't have to be."

"I woulda walked," Merry echoed the words she'd told the confused Ben Stone. "He said I should give you another chance, after that busted date. He said there aren't that many people who know when talking about it makes it worse."

Ah, shit. He lifted her hands and kissed them. "No, no... this isn't what he meant."

Suddenly Merry focused on Mike, and he saw that hint of crazy deep in her eyes that came out sometimes when she couldn't force things to make sense. "I didn't know, not until now, you know that silly shit with the squawk box, I thought I got it but I didn't, I saw Marie in church and I thought _oh my god I'm so glad that's not me_… I don't _want_ to feel that way, I don't want Marie ever to know I do…" she was sounding a little desperate, and Mike put his arms around her then.

"She's been there too," he assured her, "we _all_ have, this isn't the first time, except for you. You just got here. There's a lot going on inside your head, I know there is, and you can't get through it all on your own. Maybe I don't know how to help you figure it out. I just know you've been all alone with it, and that's wrong, and you gotta know when it _does_ help to talk about it. Maybe Max forgot to tell you that part."

Merry freed her hand from between them and showed her engagement ring to Mike as if he'd never seen it. "Max won the _pool_, and he gave it to us, he gave me this," she paused, gulped, "he gave me _you_, I never thanked him, Mikey, I should have _thanked_ him… he should _be_ here…" no more words came and she broke down in the kind of miserable grief he'd been wading through for weeks. But he'd been wading through it with help, and she hadn't. She'd been holding it together, or more like shoving it aside, for him.

"Yeah, Merry Ann, he should be," he murmured as she doubled up in his arms, "I love you, baby, and we're gonna get through this, I promise. One way or another, we'll get through this."

After another ten minutes or so Mike pulled Merry to her feet and hugged her for what he'd decided would be the first of many, many spontaneous times to come in the foreseeable future.

"Let's go home. I'll put on some Segovia and we'll sit in the big chair for awhile."

"Okay." She looked up into his red runny eyes and saw her own reflected. "Max would think we're a couple of wimps." That drew a smile from him.

"Yeah, he would, wouldn't he."

She clung to his hand as they left Ben's office. Stone was sitting at his secretary's desk; a couple of clerks were pretending to work.

"Thanks, counselor," Mike told him, and Merry forced a smile as they left.

"Don't mention it."

As Mike took Merry to the elevator he heard Stone's admonition to his staff from behind the closing office door, "And anyone who _does_ mention it can consider themselves unemployed. Understood?"

Logan shot an appreciative glance over his shoulder. "Y'know, I used to think he was a real stiff. Go figure."

* * *

A/N: many thanks to GilShalos1, who helped me distill this chapter from the chaos of my first draft!


	15. Back to the future

_Back where we started, in the Logan living room:_

"Yo, Jules and Jim, this fabulous dinner is not going to eat itself!"

Briscoe looked at Mike in puzzlement. "Jules and Jim?"

"You don't wanna know, " Mike advised, laughing at the over-the-top reference. He'd learned quite a lot about French cinema during the brief affair with an NYU film student in his wilder years. Then he called out to the kitchen, "But baby, it's the seventh inning stretch and the Yanks are ahead!"

Merry stuck her head in the doorway and gestured with a serving spoon. "Lemme tell you how it ends… Yankees suck. Dinner's ready. Eat or die." The last was delivered with a sweet smile.

Lennie jumped to his feet and saluted. "Yes _dear!_"

"Now why can't _you_ be like that?" Merry faux-whined to her husband.

Mike strolled past his wife wearing a cynical smile. "Because I know you too well, that's why." He jumped ahead just in time to avoid being whacked on the ass with the spoon.

"The longer I know you two the more I'm convinced that your wedding vows swapped 'I do' for 'sez you'," Lennie observed as he followed Mike and Merry to the table.

"You're wrong about that one," Merry told him, and exchanged a look with Mike. "Our wedding was serious as a heart attack. The last time we went to church was for Max Greevey's funeral and by the time we did the deed everyone was desperate for a happier reason."

"Now the _reception_, that's another story altogether," Mike grinned. The grin morphed into a leer as he gave Merry a meaningful look. "Remember our little party in the limo?"

Lennie looked from Mike to the now scarlet-faced Merry. "Why Meredith Ann, you're _blushing_!So is someone gonna tell the story, or do I have to use my imagination?"

As they sat down to eat Mike assured him, "Oh even _your_ imagination isn't that good."

"Hey, it cost almost a month's rent," Merry informed Lennie, rapidly recovering her composure. "Why not get our money's worth?"

Lennie muttered in a sorry-I-asked kind of voice, "Oh, ah, yeah I guess I see."

"If you did, you'd have turned to stone," Mike declared. "And you should've seen her trying to explain the stains on the tux when I returned it to Cragen, who'd borrowed it from his brother-in-law."

Merry slapped the table. "For christsake, Mikey, why don't you just show him pictures?"

"Black and white?" Lennie cracked. "No thanks, I'm a full-color kind of guy."

_Ringgg!_

Mike looked at Merry and instructed, "Your turn."

"Bullshit! I answered it _last_ time!"

_Ringgg!_

"Well don't look at me," Lennie injected into the standoff, "I don't even live here."

_Ringgg!_

"Fine, I'll get it… but you owe me one!" Merry stalked away from the table to answer the phone in the living room.

"You take turns answering the phone?" Lennie asked incredulously.

"Nah, she just _thinks_ we do." Mike handed the bowl of mashed potatoes to his partner. "This is all yours if you keep your mouth shut."

"My lips are sealed," Lennie promised as he shoveled more onto his plate.

Merry rejoined them, wearing a displeased expression. "That was Louie. He needs me to work the door on Wednesday, the bouncer is taking a few days off to go to a booze seminar or something. I never understood why we need a bouncer in the middle of the week anyway."

Mike snorted. "Well if you worked in a classier joint the clientele wouldn't need so much babysitting."

"Well if _you_ got promoted to _Commissioner_, I could afford to pick and choose!"

Lennie stood up and spread his hands as if he were the pope blessing the multitudes.

"People, people, can't we just get along?"

The "happy couple" looked first at Lennie, then at each other.

"Bossy, ain't he?" Merry observed.

"Yeah, but I'm used to him. Anyway no big deal, what could happen on a Wednesday night?"

She shrugged. "Right as almost-always." Now Merry smiled at both of them, warm and genuine this time.

"So Uncle Lennie, tell me a story."

"Well, once upon a time there were these two crazy people that fell in love…"


End file.
